Newspapers on Microfilm

Ever since I could read, I've been a reader of newspapers. Of course, at the beginning, I was basically reading the comics, when back in those days (the early 1960's) they were actually intended for children. When I became more sophisticated in my reading abilities and interests, I still wasn't one for reading all of the articles in depth, just the headlines and maybe a few lines in the articles (unless one grabbed my attention, of course). Starting in the summer of 1964, I became particularly interested in the hurricane season when Hurricane Cleo began its approach to Cuba and South Florida. The act of flipping pages in each edition of the newspaper (we took the Miami News, an evening paper then in competition with the morning Miami Herald) to find a little article here and there about where the latest hurricane was had a side benefit: I became exposed to the scope of the news as it was being reported then. When I was a student at the University of Florida here in Gainesville, I found that one of the main libraries had a microfilm reading room with extensive archives of U.S. and world newspapers. In my spare time, I sometimes would go down there and pick a year that I wanted to explore. It was very interesting to relive history as it was being reported, and sometimes I would discover something that either explained a mystery or contradicted a commonly-held belief. Let me give a couple of examples.

In 1965, Hurricane Betsy surprised all of the experts by making two loops in the western Atlantic before swinging southwestward to hit the southern end of Florida. But that wasn't all: like Katrina in 2005 (but not as severely), it swung through the Gulf of Mexico and hit New Orleans. Then (or so I thought), it went inland, dumped a lot a rain, and eventually died out. Now fast forward eight years to 1973. I was in high school talking with a friend when the conversation drifted to hurricanes. I mentioned that I was disappointed that no hurricanes had hit us since Betsy in 1965 (and hence got no time off from school). My friend responded by saying that Betsy was the strangest hurricane there was because after it hit New Orleans, it went through the U.S., came out into the Atlantic Ocean, and went clear across and hit England! I thought my friend was exaggerating a bit, but I let it go. Years later, I was reading in the UF microfilm library in a newspaper that followed Betsy's rampage through Florida and Louisiana along with its aftermath. On page 2 of one the editions, an article's headline read "London hit hard by Betsy". Did Betsy actually do as my friend said? No, it was Lloyd's, the huge shipping insurance company based in London, that had been hit hard by Betsy (due to the claims from storm damage). Apparently, my high school friend had just read this headline back then and drew a mistaken conclusion from it. It goes to show you how misinformation can easily be picked up and spread.

One another occasion, I was perusing the microfilm for the events leading up to the June 1968 California Democratic Presidential Primary. Back then, whoever won a plurality in that primary, no matter how small, automatically won all of that state's delegates to the nominating convention. Robert Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy were slugging it out, debating and campaigning hard to see who could win it. But where was front-running Hubert Humphrey? As a pre-primary article preserved in microfilm pointed out, Humphrey bypassed the California Primary because he had already amassed enough committed delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot. California was basically a contest at the end of the primary season to see who would be the leading opposition candidate and also to send more delegates to write an anti-war platform at the convention. As it turned out, RFK won the primary narrowly over McCarthy and was shortly afterwards tragically assassinated. But nowadays, if you tune in to the History Channel, you're told that Kennedy, by winning California, had sewn up the nomination and probably would have been elected president! So, reading the old newspapers also helps to deflate revisionism caused by myth-making as well as clear up mysteries caused by innocent misinformation.

Aside from following historical events as they happened, by examining old newspapers through microfilm, you can get a pulse on opinions about the issues, not just from the professional editors and columnists, but also from the letters to the editor. If you're a sports fan, you can start at the beginning of any season you want and follow your favorite team's progress through the season, game-by-game. Even if all you want to do is revert to early childhood and read the comics, then that's an option as well (although the Sunday comics usually aren't on microfilm, for some reason). What I like to do is "sneak up" on an important event in history, starting a few days earlier than the event, and see how the event unfolds and is reported from day to day. Just doing this can arm you against revisionists who base their conclusions on faulty information.

Time Travel Stories

During our stay at Ormond Beach recently, we went and saw Walt Disney's Meet the Robinsons. I enjoyed the movie, which was a Toy Story-like computer animated story about a boy inventor who is drawn into an intricate time travel crisis by a boy from the future named Wilbur Robinson (who looks a bit like Jim Carrey). It's full of the standard paradoxes you'd find in another time travel film, Back to the Future.

Aside from H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, my most memorable time travel stories were four written in the years 1941-1950 and all dealt with the paradoxes and ramifications of time travel. The best, to me, of the bunch was By His Bootstraps, written by Robert Heinlein in 1941. If you read no other time travel stories, read this one. But if this story whets your appetite for more, then I recommend Anthony Boucher's story Barrier, which came out the next year. Both By His Bootstraps and Barrier have surprise plot twists and knock-out endings. And if you want to see how utterly convoluted and complicated a time travel story can get, then read E.A. van Vogt's Recruiting Station, also from 1942. The impression I got while reading this story was that the author couldn't figure out a satisfactory way to end it and, as a result, kept getting himself (and his readers) more and more deeply mired in a big mess! I recommend Recruiting Station if you want to have a good laugh! Probably the biggest side-splitter in the genre of time travel stories is Cyril Kornbluth's masterpiece of sarcasm The Little Black Bag from 1950, though it is more about the moving of inanimate objects through time than of people.

But coming back to The Time Machine, I haven't read it yet, but did see the excellent movie made in 1960. From the movie, it seemed that Wells was more interested in conveying his social views as to where the human race was headed in both the near and far future than he was in exploring the possibilities involved in travelling through time. Even today, the movie's special effects resonate, especially the part when the time traveller observes the changes going on outside looking out of his window as he travels forward on his time machine year by year in the span of minutes.

As for Meet the Robinsons, this was a more than a funny animated story with a time travel twist. It also had a moral: keep moving forward! For even though we don't physically zip back and forth from the past into the future and all around, we do exactly that in what we dwell on in our thoughts. "Keep moving forward" were Walt Disney's own words urging his company's leaders onward with a proactive vision for the future, but it can apply to you and me as well.

The Table of Honor

One of my observations about the "special" school that I attended from the fourth through twelfth grades was the seeming coexistence of both a police state and anarchy there. An example is something that happened in the fourth grade (spring 1966) called the "Table of Honor". In this school, the philosophy, at least on the surface, was to nurture promising children toward higher academic achievement (and, so the theory went, eventual contributions to society that could help to beat those pesky Russians, who wanted to "bury" us). I don't think the teachers there were quite up to the task. They seemed to me more interested in maintaining order and discipline over the student body, although at other times they completely ignored individual students. Let me illustrate. During the second half of my fourth grade there (early 1966), the esteemed faculty decided to institute something call the "Table of Honor" whereby students would be awarded for their good behavior by being selected to sit at a special table at lunchtime. First you need to know that in our Multi-Purpose Room (our school was too special to call a cafeteria a cafeteria), the tables were of the large, long type you would see in the movie Escape From Alcatraz. So, at each table sat a good number of students. When all of the classrooms lined up to go to lunch, the "selected" got to go to the front of the line. Well, I was pretty much a quiet kid who didn't cause trouble for the teachers and stayed pretty much in the background. I had thought that I'd be a cinch for this great "honor", but didn't yet realize that the big shot professionals in charge were barely aware of my existence. So week after week went by and other students were selected while I was passed by. And some of them were obnoxious troublemakers! More and more tables were set aside for the Table of Honor that, by the time that I actually was selected, this section comprised about 40% of the entire cafeteria. Still, I felt oh so "honored" as I sat down to eat there. But I noticed that teachers were walking up and down the aisles with hawk-eyes ready to catch an "honor" student doing something improper, and then they'd be suddenly swept down upon by the teacher and told to immediately take their lunch and go to the tables "over there" (I guess that would be the Tables of Dishonor) where everybody else ate. Well, I made it there all right the first day until a friend of mine sitting across from me held up my brown lunch bag (with my garbage in it) and I started punching it like a boxer. Within seconds a vigilant teacher came up and kicked both of us off the Table of Honor. As I sat on the other side, back with the rest of the rabble, three other friends came over, having just been exiled for some other petty transgression. The weeks continued to pass until almost the entire cafeteria was the "Table of Honor" and I was one of the losers crowded into a little corner of tables! The irony is that I felt less scrutinized and freer to relax and be myself after I got kicked off.

Although the faculty acted like prison guards during lunchtime and other assemblies, at other times they seemed very detached and uninterested in the students they were supposed to be nurturing toward greatness. In class after class, I would just get up and wander around the school. Sometimes I would just hang out in the library (I liked the World Book Encyclopedia with its color pictures and glossy pages) and other times I'd wander the hallways or peek through windows and see what was going on in different classrooms. With this sort of disinterest on the teachers' part, it was inevitable that some mischief would occur. At some time late that year some dumb kid there told another dumb kid that he rubbed a penny back and forth over his arm for about a minute and it caused a pleasant, tingling sensation for a little bit (until it started hurting). This extremely weird self-mutilation fad spread quickly among some of the stupid boy students (this seemed to be a male thing) until I could scarcely go anywhere that I didn't see this going on or hear kids talking about their experiences doing this nonsense. Of course, although any fool who just walked around with their eyes open would have seen it, none of my teachers had a clue anything was going on. And they probably never would if the absolutely dumbest kid in the history of schools on this planet hadn't decided that if he used a coin with a serrated edge like a dime on his arm, then the sensation of pleasure would be magnified. In this way, he tore the skin on his arm into a bleeding mess and went crying to the school nursing station to get his arm bandaged and put into a sling. And of course, everything then came out in the open, including the names of arm-rubbing co-conspirators. The teachers were outraged! Those involved would have their parents notified, but worst of all, they were no longer allowed to eat at the Table of Honor! Ooh-noo, not the Table of Honor, too!!!

Doubtless, those responsible at my old school for coming up with this Table of Honor idea thought it was a resounding success. Maybe one of them wrote an academic journal article about it. The appropriate publication for it would have been Prison Quarterly!

Barry Bonds, Perjury, and Asterisks

Much these days is being made about the scandal in professional sports concerning athletes' improper drug use, in particular the baseball-steroids connection, and how much San Francisco Giants slugging star Barry Bonds is involved. There are different levels that this issue is being discussed on. One involves the question of whether Bonds lied to a grand jury about his use or non-use of illegal steroids to enhance his performance. One of his trainers has already been held in contempt of court for refusing to testify about this.

There is a tendency in our society lately to take successful people, subpoena them to grand juries or congressional hearings, put them under oath, pose very pointed, sometimes personal questions to them about their conduct, and then prosecute them for perjury when they refuse to admit guilt without openly invoking the Fifth Amendment (a move that in itself could wreck a career since many see in that an implicit admission of guilt). This affliction of "gotcha!" prosecutions cuts across culture and politics and needs to end! If Bonds violated the controlled substances act as it pertained to steroids, then prosecute him on that, not perjury. I believe that the spirit of the questioning that people like Bill Clinton, Martha Stewart, Scooter Libby, and Barry Bonds have had to endure violated their Fifth Amendment rights.

Another level of discussion about Bonds and steroids involves the idea that the integrity of baseball would be debased if Bonds surpasses Henry Aaron's all-time Major League record of 755 career home runs. We've already heard talk of denying Mark McGuire entry into the Baseball Hall of Fame because of his alleged steroid use (see, he refused to answer some questions to avoid self-incrimination and has suffered a terrible blow to his image and career because of it). Talk is going around of putting asterisks on suspected players' records to distinguish them from the "pure" records of others. Well, if lack of purity in competition is grounds for an asterisk, then every white player who played before the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Public Education U.S. Supreme Court ruling (overturning an 1895 ruling that allowed exclusion of African-Americans from institutions across American society, including Major League Baseball) should receive asterisks next to their own records as well. Does anyone seriously think that Babe Ruth would have hit 714 home runs if he had to face the likes of Satchel Paige and other superbly talented pitchers whose skin color barred them from competing in the majors? How phony and impure the records of all of these so-called greats of the past are when seen in this light, and how hypocritical those are who want to protect "their" legacies against someone like Barry Bonds, who if he played in Babe Ruth's day would have had to play in the unofficial but so-called "separate but equal" Negro Leagues! Much is made of Jackie Robinson's important entry into the Major Leagues in 1947, but African Americans still would not have the legal backing of our highest court for another seven years for them to be able to pursue their dreams in baseball freely without institutionalized racial discrimination.

That being said, I believe today's players are adult members of our society who should take responsibility for their actions and be held appropriately accountable when they violate the law. If Barry Bonds is thus shown to be guilty through a legitimate procedure that recognizes his due processes under the law, then he should pay the appropriate price prescribed by law. But not through provoking him to lie. And baseball cannot selectively revise its history (regarding players' records) without placing its own integrity in doubt because of its deliberate exclusion in the past of a segment of the population due to race.

Favorite Songs: #27 to #25

Continuing along the list of my personal favorites:

#27 The Little Black Egg by the Nightcrawlers, (Single, 1967)

The Little Black Egg, when I was growing up in 1967, was the song of the year as far as I was concerned. It also received an enormous amount of play on the radio in South Florida. So, imagine my surprise a few years ago when I discovered that it never even made the Billboard Top 40 nationwide! Apparently, this tune did catch on across the country, but at different times for different places, so the cumulative effect was that it had too low of a ranking at any one time to make the chart. So Little Black Egg fell off of the radar screen for a lot of people and stayed off playlists for oldies stations. For me, its lyrics are cryptic (to say the least) but the guitar, melody, and singing are great. This is one of those songs that I instantly associate with what was going on in my life at the time. I see myself with my mother and sister walking our half-blind dog Michelle (named after the Beatles song) around our Hollywood neighborhood around twilight and early evening in the late spring and summer with the stink (or fragrance, depending on your reaction) of jasmine permeating the humid air. Along our walk, we would usually be joined and escorted by as many as four or five dogs that just ran around loose. Of course, stray dogs nowadays just aren't tolerated like they used to be, but back then they were everywhere. When Little Black Egg faded from radio play, I didn't hear it again until I found it on the Internet recently. It sounds as good as ever.

#26 Oceans by Pearl Jam (from Ten, 1992)

In the early 90's we had in Gainesville a good rock station on 97.7 which played a lot of alternative songs that I liked. Late Saturday night/Sunday morning they had a feature they called "Saturday Night Six-Pack" when they would play six different CD's in their entirety. One night, they played Pearl Jam's Ten CD (this was right after their first hit single Even Flow). The songs impressed me to varying degrees, but the one that impressed me the most was Oceans, which appeared about halfway through. I would have titled it "Stormy Oceans", because the song sounds like an ominous storm brewing over rough seas. At the end, the storm breaks, the sun emerges, and all is calm again. I don't know if that is what singer/songwriter Eddie Vedder intended, but that's the effect it had on me. Pearl Jam has come out with many songs I like such as Corduroy, I Got Id, and I am Mine, but Oceans is the best. Also, like Little Black Egg, not hearing it played too much over the years helped me to avoid getting tired of it.

#25 For No One by the Beatles (from Revolver, 1966)

If I made a list of my favorite albums of all time, the Beatles' Revolver (UK edition) would easily be #1. Revolver is thoroughly listenable and I like all fourteen tracks on it. Songs like Doctor Robert, Eleanor Rigby, Here There and Everywhere, I'm Only Sleeping, and Tomorrow Never Knows are among my favorites, but one I like the most is For No One, a melancholy Paul McCartney piece backed up by piano and an inspired French horn performance. The words, though sad, are beautiful. I've always liked For No One, even back when I was ten years old. I'd have to say that the Beatles have always been the most consistently listenable band I've heard. While other artists came out with an outstanding song or two in their repertoire (this favorites list of mine is full of them), there are usually quite a few songs they did that I really don't like. But not the Beatles, at least while they were together!

My next favorites post will be for #24 to #22.

AM Radio Dx-ing

In late 1967, I was lying in my bed late at night listening to my transistor radio. Back then, almost anything worth listening to on the radio was on the AM band, with FM pretty much relegated to "elevator music" and school-run educational radio. South Florida's AM radio band was full of stations. I was just turning the tuning dial around to find something interesting. WFUN was one of my favorite rock stations, but it was based in South Miami and it's signal was weak at night to pick up. Still, I thought I had tuned it in to its frequency of 790 kilocycles, but a different station was on, and its signal was strong. There was Christian religious programming on it, which I enjoyed listening to. At the station break time, I found out that I was listening to Trans World Radio, broadcasting from the island of Bonaire in the Netherlands Antilles on 800 kc. Well, being a whiz kid in geography, I already knew where that was (in the Caribbean Sea just north of Venezuela) and was astounded that I could pick up a station that far away! So, I fiddled around the dial and came up with other stations like WBT-Charlotte, North Carolina on 1110, WSB-Atlanta, Georgia on 750, and WABC-New York on 770. After that, I began to use our larger, more sensitive family portable radio to pick up stations and began to compile a list. Thus began my hobby of AM dx-ing (dx is an abbreviation for "distance"). That Christmas, my parents went down to the local Walgreens and bought for me an inexpensive Juliette-model table radio. This radio was incredibly receptive! For a few weeks after that, I was adding many new stations to my list of "catches". Then it tapered off until one Sunday night in June, 1968, when I discovered that late Sunday nights, many stations went off the air for equipment testing and repair. Many of the frequencies blocked by strong local stations suddenly became opened up to pick up weaker, distant signals from other stations. Also, I found out that at this time, stations that only operated during daytime hours would come on the air with their equipment tests. That one night I think I picked up more than thirty new stations, and my dx-ing hobby was revitalized.

During that summer, I listened many, many hours at night hoping to pick up new stations. There were some obstacles to this. First, I couldn't understand Spanish then and living in South Florida, the AM radio band was packed with Cuban stations whose signals were overpowering and rarely left the air. Second, sports broadcasts and network shows like NBC Radio's Monitor program kept me from being able to pick up station id's, so I might be hearing a new station without ever knowing it. Third, there are six frequencies on the AM band, called "graveyard frequencies" (1230, 1240, 1340, 1400, 1450, and 1490), where, at night, if no local stations broadcast on them, then the frequency would be a massive jumbled mix of several stations from disparate places. And fourth, the summer of '68 marked the advent of interminably long songs such as Hey Jude, MacArthur Park, Those Were the Days, and Time Has Come Today. When I tuned in to a station that was playing one of these songs, by the time they were over, the station often had faded away and went unidentified. I'd also hear fragments that gave clues to either where a particular station without its call letters was or its call letters without its location. Then, one day I discovered that my father had an electronics hobbyist magazine that listed the U.S. AM stations by frequency! So, I was able to fill in many blanks and amass a couple of hundred stations in my radio log by the end of 1968.

While looking through my father's electronic magazine, I also discovered that dx-ers collected things called "verifications" which were acknowledgements from radio stations, in response to "reception reports" written them by the dx-ers that they were truly received. Usually these verifications took the form of little postcards called QSL-cards (also a hallmark of ham radio). Apparently, dx-ing is kind of like fishing in that if you tell a fellow dx-er (fisherman) that you received a certain station (caught a big fish) then just saying so meant nothing and proof was needed. Starting in 1969 I began to write reception reports and receive QSL's as well, but except for a good friend who shared this fun hobby with me, there was no real reason to keep doing it. I always had this idea in the back of my head, anyway, that, unlike with the case of amateur radio, the people at the radio stations were rather annoyed to receive my reception reports and requests for verification. And also, my enjoyment of dx-ing was personal and for the fun of the station-hunt!

I continued with my AM radio dx-ing off and on until about 1974. I used the same old radio throughout. The farthest station I received was 740-KCBS in San Francisco. I still have my station log book and all of the QSL's.

Existence, Skeptics, and Subjectivity

I have heard and read from many who refuse to subscribe to any belief pertaining to the ultimate nature of our existence except in terms of what the accepted current cumulative body of science has proven. When talk comes up about a person's sense of self, inevitably the response, with some possible variations, is that all that a person thinks or feels is determined by biochemical processes in their own body, particularly in their nervous system, and acted on by the other systems as well. Perhaps works are sited that show a person's spiritual experiences to correspond to heightened neural activity in specific parts of the brain.

Another objection these skeptics have to any nonmaterialistic view of existence, such as religion or spiritualism, is that they cannot accept knowledge of something that transcends our studied physical plane, especially when it concerns our mortality, by relying on the words of people who have claimed, whether it be from the ancient past or in the present, that they were closer to God (or, in the words of Desiderata, whatever they conceive him to be) then other people. For they see prophets, priests, shamans, imams, gurus, lamas, and all of the others who play this type of role as ordinary human beings tied to this material life and who are no further removed than anyone else from its restrictions, most importantly the restriction of eventual death. But the same skeptics should understand that this conclusion about religions and their leaders neither proves nor disproves the content of what the religions espouse. Subjective religious experience is valid and real for those who experience it. Which brings me to the problem I have with the first conjecture.

The problem I have with the explanation that all subjective experiences that an individual may have can ultimately be explained through biology and chemistry is that it is incomplete. Woefully incomplete, for there is a fundamental question that underlies the spiritual quest for meaning that I have not heard being asked. That question is not "Who am I?" or "What is my purpose in life?" (both obviously very important questions), but rather "What is the here and now?". This question can only be answered accurately by the person asking it and cannot be generalized or explained away. The answer is spiritual and real and it inspires a second question, "Why am I here and now, instead of there (another place, body) or then (another time)?" Science cannot answer the first question, and since the second follows directly from the first, it cannot answer either. For within the tenants of the philosophy of scientific investigation, the "here and now" is imbedded within the axiomatic role of the observer, a separate role on which depends the entire body of observed, empirical results of experiments that the totality of scientific expression rests. It also lies unanalyzed within the scientific process, not only as designer of the hypothesis and writer of the report, but also as the creative dreamer who conceives of which topic to investigate according to its relevance to science and society.

A doubter to this proposition may respond that any person's sense of here and now is due to their body's biochemistry, but this doesn't begin to address either the question of "what does here and now mean", or the corollary question of "why am I here at this time in this body and not someone else at another time?" I can address these questions by giving an honest answer: "I don't know! ---But I'm working on it."

One final point: when I earlier chose "skeptic" as a depiction, I used it not disparagingly, but rather to describe a generic belief system that many people abide by that discounts anything unproven by established science. However, there is a more precise usage of this term, whereby a skeptic does not necessarily believe something is untrue if scientifically unproven but rather objects to the unproven being portrayed as scientific. In this narrower definition I am a skeptic, too, acknowledging at the same time that reality cannot in its entirety be explained by science.

Sixties Sports As I Saw It

My first exposure to spectator sports began when I began to copy my father in collecting baseball cards from the backs of Post cereal boxes. He had already amassed a big collection, and he helped me out by giving me cards and letting me get some off the new cereal boxes. Actually, since I was only about six years old, that's just about the only way I could have collected them. One day, he took me to see the New York Yankees spring training camp in Fort Lauderdale. They were still winning the American League pennant almost every year and had their top stars like Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris at the camp. My father tried to point out the players to me and what they were doing, but (according to his recollection) all I wanted to do was whine because I had forgotten to bring my baseball cards with me! My interest in baseball cards gradually faded and it wasn't until the 1965 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers (who won it) and the Minnesota Twins, that I actually sat down and started seriously watching the game as it was played. Somehow, I missed the entire 1966 season. Starting around 1967, I became more interested in spectator sports. I remember the exciting World Series that year between Carl Yastrzemski's Boston Red Sox and the legendary St. Louis Cardinals with Bob Gibson and Lou Brock.

During the NFL season that year, I got caught up in the divisional race between the Los Angeles Rams and the Baltimore Colts. The Colts, with Johnny Unitas as quarterback and Don Shula as coach, were undefeated that year, going into the regular-season ending game against their rivals with an 11-0-2 record. They had been my mother's favorite team for some time, too. But they lost that last game to the Rams, who ended up with an identical 11-1-2 record and beat the Colts in the tie-breaker to go on to the playoffs. Meanwhile, the Green Bay Packers, in their last glory-season under legendary coach Vince Lombardi, limped through their regular season and easily won their weak division with four losses. But they regained their preeminence in the playoffs, first easily knocking off Los Angeles and then winning the famous "Ice Bowl" game against the Dallas Cowboys with last minute heroics 21-17 for their second straight Super Bowl trip, which they easily won 33-14 over Daryle Lamonica's Oakland Raiders.

It wasn't until the following year that I really started following both college and professional football, from season's beginning to its end and from the viewpoint of a state of Florida fan. I rooted for Florida State, the University of Florida, the University of Miami, and the Miami Dolphins. The Dolphins were in their third year of existence under coach George Wilson and had a very good year (5-8-1) with that in mind. They were already forming the nucleus of the great Super Bowl teams of the early 1970s, especially with their offensive line, "no-namers" on defense, young quarterback Bob Griese, and running backs Jim Kiick and Larry Csonka (who I remember broke his nose that year). This was the year that the New York Jets stunned the Baltimore Colts 16-7 in the Super Bowl (I was rooting for the losers in that TV-blacked out game held in Miami). In college, the Miami Hurricanes started out well under coach Charlie Tate, although their early opponent USC ran all over them with their star running back O.J. Simpson. But a late season slump ended their year at a disappointing 5-5 and coach Tate retired after the season. The University of Florida had a moderately successful season (6-3-1), beating both of their cross-state rivals but getting creamed by Georgia. FSU, although they lost to Florida, had a great season at 8-3, winning a stunner at home over Houston (which had beaten other teams by 77-3 and 100-6 scores) 40-20 after leading at halftime 25-0. The Seminole offense was lead by the explosive quarterback/receiver combination of Bill Cappleman and Ron Sellers. Sellers would later star for the New England Patriots. FSU played in the first Peach Bowl ever in Atlanta, although they lost it to LSU 31-27. At that time, they were my favorite college team.

1968 also saw an extremely pitching-dominated season in major league baseball, where Denny McLain won 31 games for the Detroit Tigers and Bob Gibson pitched with a sizzling 1.12 ERA for the St. Louis Cardinals, who played for a second straight world series championship, this time against Detroit. But the Tigers, after being down three games to one, won the last three games and the Series, due largely to their other star pitcher, Mickey Lolich.

The spring of 1968 experienced my first watching of the Triple Crown in horse racing. I saw Dancer's Image win the Kentucky Derby, only to be disqualified with Forward Pass declared the winner. Then, Forward Pass won the Preakness outright, while Dancer's Image was disqualified yet again but for a different reason. So when the Belmont came around there was a good chance we would see a Triple Crown winner for the first time since 1948 (and in my first year of watching it). But the length of the Belmont course showed itself to be a big factor as Stage Door Johnny outlasted Forward Pass and the rest of the field to win it.

1968 was also the year of the first Olympic Games (winter and summer) that I ever saw, but I don't remember very much except that ice skater Peggy Fleming won the only U.S. gold medal in the winter games. I did get the feeling, even at that early point, that the games seemed to be more about the countries than about the actual athletes and their sports. Unfortunately, this feeling has yet to waver even to this day.

I did not begin to follow basketball until the fall of 1968, when the American Basketball Association's Minnesota Muskies decided they could do better down south and became the Miami Floridians (I still can't get over that stupid nickname) for the 1968-69 season. But I'll leave that for another time...

Asheville Trip

Last year, my family and I travelled to Asheville, North Carolina for vacation. We enjoyed ourselves visiting the Biltmore House, travelling along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and even crossing into Tennessee to spend a day at Dollywood.

We decided to make our Blue Ridge Parkway (which cuts right through Asheville) excursion going westward a few miles. The scenery was magnificent and we stopped at some places for picture-taking. We finally stopped at a town called Waynesville, where we were going to have lunch in a restaurant featured in their promotional brochure that we had. Only when we got there, that restaurant had shut down and other places were closed on account of it being Sunday. Finally, we found a very good family restaurant along that downtown strip and ate lunch. We decided that we would use the Interstate to drive back to Asheville. After leaving the downtown parking lot, turning the corner and going down a road a little bit, we saw stretching up and down the street a large number of eating places of the sort you'd see anywhere. And we were worried that we wouldn't find anything!

We went to Dollywood via the Smoky Mountain National Park. Dollywood is a wonderful, laid-back park that has something for everyone. There are musical, comedy, and kiddie shows going on all the time. There is a blacksmith demonstration as well as many craft centers. The rides varied in quality. I did not like the Tennessee Tornado steel roller coaster because it was too rough and pulled on my neck too much. Blazing Fury was a fun little indoor themed ride. The water rides were fine but we had to wait in long lines for those. There was an imposing-looking ride called Timber Tower that was really pretty mild to ride. But the ride that really impressed me was their wooden roller coaster Thunderhead. It combined smoothness with great drops, speed, and turns.

Although Dollywood was a pleasant experience, the drive back from Dollywood was harrowing, even though we took the Interstate back into North Carolina. It was dark and raining hard by the time we crossed over from Tennessee into North Carolina, with my wife driving and me navigating with a map. And, although we were on I-40, the road curved and dipped very treacherously. The visibility was very poor. To make things worse, the road was full of extremely huge semis driving like it was the Daytona Speedway! Just when it looked like we couldn't see our way at all, one of these trucks passed us and shortly thereafter turned off the road. We followed it into a rest stop that we never would have noticed if the semi hadn't led us there. We all got out, walked around, went to the restroom and bought some vending machine items. I looked at the "you are here" map that was posted. It was then that I discovered that we were only halfway through "The Gorge"! Despite that, the rest of the ride back, although difficult, was better. There was a bit of praying going on during that ride!

We toured Biltmore House, too. The four of us used their "headset" tour that really told us details about its history and its rooms we never would have known otherwise. I thought that if Disney ever bought that place they'd put in some of their audio-animatronics ("mechanized people") to make the rooms seem more "alive"!

Asheville is a very pretty town. The people living there should be proud of it. They also have a campus of the University of North Carolina there that we visited. In some parts of Asheville, though, you have to watch where you're walking or else you may suddenly find yourself tumbling down a steep hill!

This trip actually marked the first occasion ever that I flew in an airplane! We flew from Gainesville, Florida to Atlanta and then to Asheville. From all of the horror stories about delays and security check humiliations, I was pleasantly surprised at how smoothly the entire experience went. However, I am glad I had gotten some training with thrill rides at nearby theme parks the previous couple of years! The only outstanding problem I noticed anywhere was that, in the Atlanta terminal, the women's restroom always had a long line going way out into the terminal hallway. I hope they alleviated that problem for the sake of the female passengers. The four flights we took on our round trip all were on small Delta planes, not the bigger jets. The people working at the airport and on the planes were all true professionals who went about their job assignments calmly, politely, and confidently. I say this because a few days after we got back home from our trip, news came out that a plane of the same design as ours crashed taking off from Lexington, Kentucky, erupting into fire and killing its passengers. The pilot had taken off on the short runway there that was intended only for small private planes like Cessnas. Both the copilot and the assigned air traffic controller were distracted doing other things at the moment the pilot made his fatal decision to turn down the wrong runway. I looked at my Google Earth satellite shot of the Lexington Airport, and I couldn't fathom how anyone could have made such a stupid mistake. The entire airport had only two runways, and the long one was much longer and more prominent than the short one.

Maybe in the future, the next time I have the opportunity to fly, I'll just blow over that Lexington accident as a statistical fluke. But for now I'll just stick with my thrill rides. Or just watch my DVD of Airplane!

Science Education Initiative

There was a debate taking place on the U.S. Senate floor yesterday about the need to mobilize ourselves as a nation and push for greater science and math education with increased federal funding. The reason given is that we are graduating a paltry amount of engineers and scientists compared to China and India while nationwide our children's performance on standardized tests in science and math is very low, compared to several other countries. We, say the senators, can look back in history after the Soviets successfully launched their Sputnik satellite into space in 1957 and our reaction to that as a guide for what to do. At that time, the Eisenhower and Kennedy presidencies signed bills passed by Congress greatly increasing the funding for more science and math education. Our heightened call to competitiveness dramatically culminated in a series of successful moon landings from 1969 to 1973 and kept our general level of technology far ahead of our competitors.

I agree that we should push for more and better education in science, engineering, and mathematics. However, it must be noted that a great political initiative like this is much more likely to succeed if there is a punctuated, dramatic event that provokes it. Sputnik was one such event. The 9/11 attack on our country was another that changed the political climate dramatically enough to push through other big changes, be they ultimately for better or for worse.

I remember throughout elementary school being shown films from a science education series funded by Bell Telephone and probably the government. These films, starring bald, bespectacled scientist/educator Dr. Frank Baxter, were produced in that post-Sputnik period that spurred political and nationwide interest in science. It featured very compelling and inspiring films about time, the sun, the weather, our heart and circulatory system, our nervous system, cosmic rays (as an introduction to subatomic physics), DNA and heredity, and language (I probably left out one or two). Another example of what happened then was when science fiction writer Isaac Asimov responded to Sputnik by embarking on a new career of prolifically writing primarily non-fiction science education books that introduced basic principles and facts in the various disciplines without drowning the reader (presumed to be a newcomer to the field) in intricate mathematics.

So, it is not enough to see a problem like this and pour a lot of money into it. That may be a necessary component of the solution, of course, but there are two other components to success as well. First, the problem in our nation's science education needs to be portrayed somehow in a vivid way that can, like Sputnik, serve as a symbol. Short of the Chinese landing their astronauts on the moon, I don't see this happening soon. Second, science education in the elementary and secondary school levels has to convey encouragement and inspiration beyond the technical expertise in the concerned areas. Besides television shows like Nova and some on the Discovery Channel that depict the excitement and fulfillment underlying scientific discoveries, I believe that this area is lacking as well. But the current undertaking is worthwhile nevertheless. And, with the financial underpinning in place, events may transpire that provide the social impetus to value these important educational fields as an indispensable investment in our national future.

Comets

When I was a senior in high school, one of the science news stories that occasionally appeared in the media, always buried under mountains of Watergate items, was the discovery and impending passing-by of the purportedly spectacular Comet Kohoutek, only a short time before discovered by a Czech astronomer. Comets bright enough to be visible to the naked eye, we were told, were exceedingly rare, and the only one that had been expected in the foreseeable future was Halley's in 1986. So there was a lot of hype going on about Kohoutek in 1973. My high school astronomy club even got hold of a good telescope that they used to go out into the local community and offer public viewing. But to the unaided eye, when this comet actually came, it was barely visible, and in urban settings, invisible. The aftermath saw Comet Kohoutek treated as a letdown, an act that fizzled like a fireworks display full of duds. So comet fever disappeared as the population turned away from the sky and got more into themselves during the 70's "me" decade.

Now let's fast-forward a little to late in 1975, when reports began to surface that a newly discovered comet, named Comet West, was going to be visible early the following year. Not surprisingly, no one seemed interested. But I was. In March, 1976, anyone who just walked outside a little before sunrise and looked eastward a few degrees above the treetops would have seen Comet West streaking across the sky! It looked as if someone had taken a very thick stick of chalk and smeared the sky with it. However, even though this show was spectacular, it went almost ignored in the media.

I had thought from much earlier on in my life that Halley's Comet would have looked like that display presented by Comet West. Ironically, when it did show up in late 1985 through early 1986, Halley's "bombed" (for its visual effect) just as Kohoutek twelve years earlier. In late 1985, I was able, though, to cross the street from my apartment each evening where a big field was (since then plugged up with a Wal-Mart and a Lowe's) and, with the help of my binoculars and my Field Guide to the Stars, locate and plot Halley's Comet's path through the constellations Aquarius and Pisces. But it was nothing compared to Comet West. To this day I have yet to speak to anyone outside my family who knows what I am talking about when I mention Comet West, a most spectacular comet!

A comet of this visual impact wouldn't appear again until 1996-1997, when we were greeted with the presence of two of them: Comets Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp. An amateur astronomer took a photograph of the latter during its approach that showed a common optical photographic effect of lines jutting sideways from a background star. I had seen this effect many times in the past and knew it for what it was. But some opportunistic people in the media who should have known better allowed the disinformation to be broadcast that this was an alien craft. And the leader of an insulated west-coast cult named Heaven's Gate took this as the sign that a spaceship was going to take them up. The cult members committed mass suicide because they thought it would release themselves from their bodies to join up with their alien buddies. Later, the involved media figures all made out like they were being unfairly targeted for criticism for promoting the asinine Hale-Bopp spaceship notion that led to this tragedy.

Earlier this year, for Southern hemisphere observers, Comet McNaught lit up the night sky. It earlier had a brief time of visibility in the Northern hemisphere as well, but I missed it. I think sometimes the simple day-to-day exigencies of living cause me to miss opportunities for experiences (like seeing comets) that could have enriched my life more. Since astronomy is an interest of mine, a little more consistent attention given to magazines like Sky and Telescope and Astronomy (or finding a dependable astronomy website) seems to be a awfully good idea! After all, you can't always depend on the general media to get you the information you're looking for in a timely and accurate manner.

Favorite Songs: #30 to #28

Ever since I learned to write things down, I've been making lists. And one of my favorite things is to make lists of my favorite things! Since beginning to follow popular music in the early-to-mid 1960s, I've rated and listed the music I liked. This has been going on more or less for over forty years now, with some gaps in there when I wasn't listening much to the radio. I've looked over my lists of hundreds of favorite songs over the years and picked out my "Top Thirty" list of all-time personal favorites, which I am going to reveal on this blog from time-to-time, going from #30 to #1. But since this is a "writing" blog, I will write some comments about each song as to what it means to me. This will be an ongoing project that I'll came back to from time to time. So, here we go with the first song:

#30 You by George Harrison (from Extra Texture, 1976)

When the Beatles hit the big time in America in 1964, people all around were asking each other, "Who is your favorite Beatle?" My answer then would be George Harrison. I liked his voice and his songs then. Two of my favorite tunes from 1964 were Happy Just to Dance with You and Devil In Her Heart, both sung by George. After the Beatles broke up in 1970, he came out with the blockbuster three-record album All Things Must Pass, which brought him both great artistic acclaim as well as very high expectations for his future works. Unfortunately, he couldn't keep up with those expectations and his later albums became successively less popular until several of them actually went out of print. Extra Texture was one of these. I never listened to most of the tracks on it, but I can say with certainty that if they were anything like You, then it would have been a better success. You was released as the promotional single to Extra Texture in 1976 and was a beautiful, emotional love song that made me feel happier after hearing it. George seemed to have two conflicting natures: on one hand, he tended to be reclusive in his private life, while on the other, he relished collaborating and "jamming" with other musicians on different projects. It was during those periods when he felt like he had to prove himself as an independent solo artist that, at least the way I see it, he showed the greatest strain in his recordings. But you would never know this from this wonderful track, You. By the way, Extra Texture is back in print, in CD-form, of course.

#29 Fall of the Peacemakers by Molly Hatchet (from No Guts, No Glory, 1983)

After John Lennon was shot to death in December, 1980, several artists who knew John well, such as Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Elton John, rushed in to write and record songs in his tribute. But, ironically, it took a died-in-the-wool rowdy Southern rock band like Molly Hatchet to pay the ultimate tribute with Fall of the Peacemakers, an unforgettable piece characterized by the repeating litany, "Stop the madness!" The somber mood is consistent throughout this lengthy song, which includes a long closing instrumental section after the singing is done. And this is one of the best closing instrumental jams I've heard, right up there on the same stage as the Allman Brothers' Rambling Man or Lynyrd Skynyrd's Free Bird. But what I like most about Fall of the Peacemakers is that it accomplishes what it sets out to do: deliver a heartfelt sense of appreciation for John Lennon, anguish for his death, and deep concern for the epidemic of gun violence in this country. Sadly, recent events render this song very timely today.

#28 Living for the City (full version) by Stevie Wonder (from Innervisions, 1973)

Don't settle for the shortened radio-play version of this song: to get the full impact of the drama contained within it, you need to listen to the complete version as it was intended to be heard. Living for the City depicts the lives of a poor African-American family from Mississippi who only encounter hardship there because of racial discrimination. Their son moves to New York to make a better life for himself, and he .... well, you have to listen to the song to find out what happens. Stevie really lays it on the line in Living for the City and pours out his feelings about the racial divide and injustice in his beloved country. This is a very disturbing song that is bound to provoke the listener into reflection long after it ends. And his singing is incredible! How can anyone hold a note that long?

More favorite songs to come...

Slippery Slopes

How many times have you heard or read arguments being made against changing something because it would begin a slide down a “slippery slope”? You can take almost any issue you want that involves a push to change something, and someone is bound to raise the specter of the fearsome consequences, as if doing something that is, by consensus, popular with people in general and seems rational and appropriate, would cause changes to accelerate uncontrollably until disastrous consequences result. Here are a few examples:

--In the 1970s, opponents used the slippery slope argument in arguing to defeat ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (which stated that a person’s rights could not be abridged because of his or her gender) by, among other things, suggesting that men and women would ultimately be forced under the ERA to share the same public restrooms.

--As the technology put into each successive generation of small arms becomes more advanced and deadly, there is a rational reaction to want to regulate their availability to the general public. But when any law is proposed to this effect, gun organizations and some owners say that this is but a step to the ultimate goal of the state confiscating everyone’s arms.

--The idea of teaching sex education in school with the aim of avoiding teen-age pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases, including AIDS, is a slippery slope promoting sexual behavior that will result in mass promiscuity.

--Any attempt by the government to regulate health insurance so that the population will be guaranteed universal coverage is the first step down the slippery slope of socialized medicine and state takeover of all medical institutions, with all freedom of choice eliminated and poor medical service provided.

--If embryonic stem-cell research is publicly funded, then this can only slide toward the nightmarish growth of an industry that grows and kills human beings for their body parts.

--The outlawing of the procedure in abortion known as intact dilation and extraction is but one step sliding down a slope toward the ultimate outcome of outlawing all abortions.

--If a community takes upon itself the compassionate goal of providing a more humane environment for its homeless population, then that will start the slippery slope slide of attracting others from outside, who then will hopelessly swamp that community and make it unlivable.

--Any sign of the U.S. reassessing its military policy in Iraq starts us down the slippery slope ending with the terrorists winning the war on terror.

--Allowing conditional amnesty for illegal aliens and implementing a guest worker program is just the start down a slope that will end with the U.S. being overrun by an invasion of people who would impose its language and culture on us without respecting our own.

--The authorized used of electronic surveillance to prevent terrorist attacks is just the first step in the slide leading to the curtailment of our fundamental freedoms as Americans and our subjugation to the state.

--If the minimum wage gets raised, then this will start the slide down a slippery slope with runaway inflation, mass layoffs, business bankruptcies, and economic devastation.

I disagree with the “slippery slope” arguments attached to each of the aforementioned issues. While it is rational and prudent to carefully explore the ramifications of changes we make in our society, we also need to avoid becoming hostages to our fears. That would only lead us down the “slippery slope” to utter stagnation!

Star-Gazing

One evening in early spring, 1964 (I was seven then), my father took me aside and brought out an extremely old boy scout handbook that he had kept from his own youth. He opened it up to the astronomy section and proceeded to explain to me how the stars in the sky have names and form patterns that, when connected with lines, make pictures. These patterns, or groups of stars were called "constellations", and by learning these constellations I could find my way around the night sky. He gave me that book to look at along with another one, Herbert Zim's Golden Guide to the Stars (remember the Golden Guides?), which had a section that showed and discussed the main constellations in greater detail. I took these books and studied them intensively. My father took me outside and showed me where to find constellations like Gemini, Orion, Canis Major, Ursa Major, and Leo. For the rest of the year and in 1965, star-gazing was a big interest of mine. When, at school, we were given time to draw whatever we liked, I always drew star maps (except for a phase when I was into drawing sailing ships with extremely complicated and, I'm sure, unseaworthy patterns of sails). One day in 1965 my parents, my sister, and I went down to Miami. One of the things we did there was buy some magazines at a large newsstand. One of them was a star-gazing guide that was much more detailed and interesting than the Golden Guide. I learned the names, configurations and positions of all 88 "official" constellations, even the numerous, obscure ones in the far southern celestial hemisphere. Now, anyone can draw any pattern they want in the stars and make it resemble something (in A Beautiful Mind, John Nash wooed his future wife this way). A pattern like this is called an "asterism". The Big Dipper is actually an asterism which is part of the constellation Ursa Major.

Still, there are the "official" 88 constellations. And these are the standards that need to be learned to be able to read a celestial map properly. But there are other things to know as well. On a celestial map, the lines of latitude are the same as on the Earth. But longitude is different with regard to the heavens, for it is expressed, not in degrees, but in hours. A full cycle measures 24 hours. Also, east is toward the left and west is toward the right on a star map.

Over the years, I've kept up with my star-gazing and passed on a little of my enthusiasm and knowledge to my wife and children. Learning about the night sky has two other educational benefits. Many of the constellation names are in Latin and quite a few of the star names are in Arabic, so you can pick up some foreign language vocabulary without even knowing it! And several of the mostly northern constellations are based on ancient Greek mythology, so that can get your foot in the door in that field of knowledge. With a knowledge of the stars and constellations, wherever your life leads you, you'll always have the familiar patterns of stars above, even if you're in an unfamiliar place far from home. I am grateful to my father for having shared this interest of his with me. And I recommend it to you and others!

NESFA

Many science fiction writers of the twentieth century invested much of their efforts into short stories that were submitted and published in pulp magazines, some better than others. Some of these writers, like Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke, went on to write novels. The novels that these three writers put out were what gave them their fame and raised more interest about their short stories in turn. There were other authors who wrote great short science fiction literature, but who never achieved the widespread name recognition that the "Big Three" had. The great body of these short works, some of which were masterpieces, had fallen out of print along with the pulp publications that they had appeared in. The more famous authors, with their publishers, realized that they could buy back, compile, and sell collections of their own stories. But the others either didn't have the pull with their publishers or didn't amass a sufficient quantity of recognized works to assemble and publish a collection of short works. Excellence in short science fiction has been recognized over the years by the publication of "year's best" anthologies that at least exposed these less known authors and gave them a small share of the great legacy of the "Golden Age" of science fiction. Asimov himself, in collaboration with Martin H. Greenberg, collected and edited anthologies for a series titles The World's Best SF. Writer and editor Donald Wollheim put out a different series honoring the year's best stories. After Asimov and Wollheim died, this concept continued with editors David Hartwell,and Gardner Dozois putting out separate quality anthologies of the year's best short science fiction. But there was still a demand for the publication of the collected works for some of the lesser known writers.

This is where NESFA, the New England Science Fiction Association, stepped in to perform a great service to fans of this genre. Over the past few years, NESFA has published collections of the short fiction of many writers, notable among them Cyril Kornbluth, William Tenn, Robert Sheckley, E.A. van Vogt, Eric Frank Russell, and Fredric Brown. Some of these had published small paperback collections of short stories over the years, but NESFA collected these and put out definitive volumes of the authors' works. There are many other science fiction writers whose collected works are listed on their website. NESFA isn't the only organization doing this. North Atlantic Books has been collecting all of Theodore Sturgeon's works into several volumes, and SFBC (Science Fiction Book Club) took over the publication of Two-Handed Engine, a collection of the best short stories that the husband-wife writing team of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore had written, either alone or in collaboration with each other (the classic story Mimsy Were the Borogoves was a collaboration). I think that, ultimately, the appropriate place for these types of collected works is the public or school library, but it's wonderful that you can now buy for yourself a comprehensive collection of your favorite science fiction author's short stories. Hats off to NESFA and the others!

Future Blog Features

Please forgive the austere appearance of this blog. If you only knew how far I've come just to get to the point where I can publish daily entries in my own blog over the Internet... Surely as time progresses, I'll learn how to do stuff like putting in pictures and hyperlinks. I'm not sure what to do about comments (as far as the settings are concerned), but I welcome any that pertain to the blog entry and are written in good taste. I do regularly read a small number of blogs, so when I figure out how to do it, they'll be listed. I also understand there are certain things I can do to promote my blog to others. Something to do with "site feeds", "syndication" and "media aggregation". Nobody's advised me about this yet, so at this stage I've avoided activating them for this blog. And there are other things as well, but regardless of the various improvements that can be made to the site, I'll always keep my writing as its overriding theme.

Excellence and Engagement

I believe in standards of excellence in every form of constructive human endeavor. After all, who doesn't admire the star athletes, top scientists, model citizens, creative artists, and great inventors? They not only serve as inspirations for people as to what is possible, but also as pathfinders showing us the directions in their fields that hold the greatest promise. And their collective accomplishments are progressive in nature: they tend to build on what their predecessors did. Take machines such as the television or automobile. They are actually composites of many machines invented in earlier times for different applications that have been modified into more complex arrangements for new applications. One can observe the progression over the centuries of classical music into the baroque, renaissance, romantic, and modern forms, and the integration at various times of other world musical forms into the tableau. Sports have developed so much in recent years that it hardly seems worth the trouble trying to compare the athletic skills and accomplishments of our present-day athletes to those of-say, fifty years ago. The fields of mathematics, physical science, biology, medicine, and computer science all depend completely on this progressive excellence.

But that having been acknowledged, it must also be said that as a society, we tend to go a bit overboard in our competitive zeal for excellence. And sometimes excellence gets confused with perfection. I once took an intermediate-level Russian language class in college. At the beginning of the course, the professor made a statement that I found disconcerting: he said that, in his class, we students could say anything we wanted in Russian, but only if we said it correctly, without any mistakes. I suppose you may have figured out what happened: very few students spoke freely. For the correct way to learn and become fluent in a language, whether it is your first, native language or a second language that you pick up as an immigrant or visitor to a different land, is to speak us much as possible, assimilating as many words and concepts as soon as possible in as grammatically correct way as possible. Mistakes are a necessary part of the process. You encourage those who have mastered the language to correct you, nudging you to change specific areas when you err. But you never do anything to stifle someone's expression when they are trying to learn to speak the language.

About 26 years ago, I knew two Vietnamese women who came over to America during the mass boat exodus that was going on. One was very educated in her home country while the other was illiterate. The educated woman was very self-conscious about her speech and, although she could understand English quite well, she could still barely speak it even after one year here. The other woman, however, aggressively spoke to anyone who would listen to her, and she picked the language up rapidly! I'm sure that both of them eventually mastered spoken English because of its omnipresence in their lives. Personally, I am more like the one who didn't speak because she was afraid of being laughed at or ridiculed. I love foreign languages. I love to hear people speak them just to see how much I can understand. I also like to read them to see how much of that I understand. I have foreign language news broadcasts downloaded off the Internet onto my MP3 that I listen to often. One of my favorite TV shows is Despierta America, the weekday morning show that the Spanish language network Univision puts out, starring Fernando Arau and Ana Maria Canseco. In the past I've completed college courses in Spanish, French, German, Russian, Polish, and Japanese. I've studied Vietnamese and Chinese on my own and gained a little bit of confidence practicing speaking them with some wonderful people with whom I used to work in a Chinese restaurant. But I've never been out of this country and I've yet to become fluent in another language. By the perfectionist standards of some in our society, I don't measure up in this area. But that's somebody else's problem, not mine. I carry with me every day of my life a feeling of affection for these languages and their speakers. Maybe someday I'll attain fluency in one or more of them, but I don't feel that I have to be at the top in order to enjoy them as interests. I would like to get over my self-consciousness, though, and practice speaking them more to others. But I don't need to have becoming a super-linguist as a goal in order to enjoy studying foreign language at my own pace according to my own abilities! I appreciate excellence in areas of endeavor, but I also value engagement in them as well, even when this doesn't lead to the apex of achievement.

Comity

In case you haven't noticed, the level of personal, angry rancor in the national political arena has risen to unprecedented proportions. It's bad enough that the only reasonable radio show on a national scale that portrays political figures and issues dispassionately and objectively is the late late night Jim Bohannon Show. I can't turn on CNN Headline News Network late at night anymore without getting objectivity-challenged and agenda-driven Nancy Grace or Glenn Beck! I don't particularly like MSNBC's Keith Olbermann's viciousness, especially when he personally attacks irrelevant celebrities like Britney Spear or Tom Cruise, but he's also usually pretty excessive when knocking Bill O'Reilly (whom I don't care for either) as one of the "worst persons in the world". I'm usually at work when Sean Hannity is on Fox, but sometimes I accidently tune in to his radio show. The moment he determines that a caller has a different perspective on an issue from him, Mr. Hannity starts with the interruptions and name-calling. Radio is, as I alluded, almost hopeless. I had thought that Air America (when I could actually hear them on the radio) would counterbalance the meanness of right-wing hosts like Rush Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Neil Boortz, and Michael Savage. But, except for Randi Rhodes, the talk show hosts that they had seemed as vicious and personal as the others (and she could get a little over the top sometimes, too). The current situation is unfortunate, because the lack of civility on the part of these people obfuscates the legitimate political and social opinions that they want to persuade others to adopt, be they conservative, moderate, or liberal.

So where can one go to get a reasoned, polite discussion of the issues where dissenting opinions are respected and those expressing them are even praised by their opponents? Just step right up, ladies and gentlemen, to C-Span 2, home of the United States Senate, one of the last bastions in this country of the precious commodity known as "comity": the maintenance of a climate of mutual respect and even friendliness among advocates of conflicting agendas, even in the midst of intense debate. The speakers during Senate proceedings get pretty passionate sometimes, and every now and then somebody steps over the line and makes an insulting reference to the other side. Often, when this happens the offended party will just brush it off, but sometimes the speaker is called to account for his statements and usually ends up apologizing for them. Most of the time you can really get the pros and cons on important issues from both sides, and sometimes an issue is such that the division of opinion isn't drawn on party lines. The drawbacks of using this as a resource for information are (1) the Senate usually isn't in session, (2) when the Senate IS in session it is in quorum call (a parliamentary maneuver to temporarily pause proceedings) much of the time, and (3) except for something called "morning business", where senators can speak a specified block of time about whatever they want, the issues discussed are limited to whatever is on the agenda at the time. Still, it is refreshing to hear issues being discussed in an environment of comity, as opposed to the aforementioned hosts and networks. I'd like to be able to say that our House of Representatives shows the same level of mutual respect that I see in the Senate, but that usually isn't the case, sad to say.

Diversity Education: Two Aspects

The movement to educate people about diversity that has taken place in our media, schools, and workplaces is one of the more positive efforts that have been made to improve society by working on changing the attitudes of people, one by one. There are, over the course of the calendar year, certain designated days, weeks, and months that focus on the accomplishments, goals, and struggles within various demographic communities. The most obvious expression of this is the presentation of biographies of famous and accomplished people in history who belong to particular groups. During diversity education events, people are often also encouraged to bring foods and perform music that reflect upon their backgrounds. To me, these are good things, but they are not enough if the ultimate goal is to eliminate prejudice and bring our society together. For I believe it is fear rising from ignorance that spurs bigotry, and although it may seem like a safe thing for promoters of diversity education to dwell upon the best in our society, it also needs to be shown that most members of each demographic population are basically average people whose commonality with the average people across group designations is much greater than that with the extreme "good" or "bad" in their own group. So, when a news event occurs that portrays someone in a "bad" light, it is important that the people already be educated to the fact that this "bad" behavior cannot be stamped across whatever group that "offending" person is identified with. This second aspect of diversity education is obviously a much more delicate and difficult thing to accomplish, which is probably why it, in my opinion, has been relatively neglected.

History Or Tribute

One week in March, 2000, my family and I stayed in a cabin in northern Georgia near Blairsville and the North Carolina border. The terrain was very mountainous by eastern U.S. standards and our cabin rested at the top of a curved, steep climb. It didn't look too impressive from the outside, but once inside you could see that it was very attractive with two stories plus a basement and many of the amenities you'd expect from a good hotel (except cable TV and swimming pools). Everything in it was spacious, including a screened-in porch complete with a picnic table and rocking chairs overlooking the wooded valley below. In the master bedroom, resting on a large dresser were two large books about the U.S. Civil War. One was a nice picture-book account of the various stages of the war, something you might find in the discount large-book section of a Barnes and Noble or Books-a-Million store. The other book interested me in that, in discussing the performance of the various generals, political leaders and other participants in the war, only complimentary things were said. Every other account of the Civil War that I had read or watched or heard was full of stories of blundering and abject incompetence on the part of the same people who were portrayed in this book in such rosy terms. Even the greatest generals like Lee and Grant sometimes used incredibly bad judgement that cost their soldiers dearly. So, my first reaction to this book was one of indignation for this blatant whitewashing of history. I wondered whether or not the author had a hidden agenda. But after some reflection, I arrived at a totally different conclusion. The scope of this book was not to give a history lesson, but rather to serve as an impartial memorial for all of the participants in this tragic conflict. Just as a monument to a famous historical figure or a eulogy in a funeral service is a tribute and not an assessment, then so this book paid tribute while leaving analysis to the drove of material already out there. With this in mind, I was able to enjoy this book within its self-imposed limitations. And it did spur me on to a greater interest in the Civil War, too.