My January 2019 Running Report

As the new year began I had high hopes of possibly running both a half-marathon and a 15K race in January...unfortunately about a week into the month I came down with some lower back pain that put an end to my high ambitions.  Still, on the 5th I ran in a 5K race: Gainesville's Depot Park Run, which takes place every Saturday morning and is free...donations and volunteer work are always welcome, though.  I enjoyed that run and thought it would be a good idea to make a weekly habit of it, either running the course or walking it with Melissa whenever she wanted to go.  But that hasn't happened yet, although this Saturday I'm looking into returning.  I don't think I'll be running this city's Five Points Half-Marathon in February either...I'm not in shape for it and the fools completely changed what had been a fantastic course: instead Melissa and I are visiting Savannah that weekend...

Despite missing 9 days of running due to that backache, I still managed to run a total of 65 miles in January, with 5.2 miles being my longest single run.  I'm still looking forward to running longer distances, but maybe I've reached the point where 10K and 15K races should be the distance limit.  But "official" racing isn't why I run anyway: I like the activity for its own sake...

Weekly Short Stories: 1942 Science Fiction, Part 3

This week as I continue through the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 4 (1942), I have run across two rather long short stories...novellas might be a more appropriate designation.  They are Nerves by Lester del Rey and Barrier by Anthony Boucher...the titles may sound familiar if you'd read this blog over the last couple of years: I've reviewed them both previously.  One of the problems with a really long "short" story is that the author sometimes doesn't seem to know exactly what to do with it...with Nerves del Rey wrote a full-length novel adaption a few years later.  But I had hoped that he would have pruned out some of the excess narrative and made it shorter...I guess that was hoping for too much, though.  Well, let's see if I can't throw in a couple more thoughts about these stories...

NERVES by Lester del Rey
Nerves lays out...way back in 1942...a foreboding picture of what a nuclear reactor meltdown would look like, both in its danger to the surrounding community and environment and in terms of the horrible effects of radiation and burns on human casualties.  The story focuses on two physicians thrown into this disaster shorthanded, an elderly doctor experienced with established medicine and a young, unexperienced doctor who understands much about atomic physics and the effects of radiation.  How these two interact may be the best part of Nerves, although I still can't get over the author seeing this 3 years before the first atomic bomb was exploded, 13 years before the first nuclear reactor was built, and 37 and 44 years before the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl meltdowns, respectively.  Here's a link to my 2017 review of Nerves: [link]…

BARRIER by Anthony Boucher
A young man with no particular specialized knowledge or skills is hired by the inventor to be the guinea pig in a time machine going from our "present" time (i.e. the early 1940s) some five hundred years into the future.  He quickly discovers to his horror that he is now in a totalitarian, stagnant society, the Stasis, that forbids any kind of scientific or artistic innovation...people can even be arrested for not conforming to dictated rules of grammar.  A time barrier has been built to prevent anyone from the future with notions of how better to run things from infiltrating their time and wrecking the Stasis...our time traveler finds himself both pursued by the "Stappers", that is, the enforcers of the Stasis, and temporally imprisoned, unable to return to our present century.  He befriends some members of the resistance movement and then the time travel paradoxes begin to present themselves.  As a matter of fact, if you're looking for the story to end all stories about the paradoxes involved in traveling through time, then this one is for you.  And here's a link to my 2017 review of Barrier: [link]…

Next week I should be able to conclude my look back at the best in short science fiction from 1942...

Optimizing Unconscious Competence at Work

I've mentioned before about how I admire the work ethic of NFL quarterback Tom Brady, bemoaning in the process that he plays for "my" Miami Dolphins' chief rival, the Patriots.  Brady is known to stand facing a wall and endlessly repeat his stances and throwing motions in order to perfect them and reinforce these actions to the point where they become unconscious, freeing him to think about more pressing issues during a game...like his receivers' sometimes errant pass routes or that linebacker who's unexpectedly coming up at him on a blitz. Brady's philosophy of work is similar to mine in that first you master every aspect of your assignment that you can turn into unconscious routines, and that involves looking on a micro-level at the precise ways that you arrange things and the order in which you perform your functions.  I believe...and it has been borne out over the course of my work life...that if you can commit as much of your job to unconscious competence, then that will allow you to focus your intelligence and volition on the inevitable glitches and exceptions that arise from all sources.  I've recently begun a new job assignment at my workplace and I've still working hard on getting everything in order...the basics are simple enough but it's also easy to get tripped up over details if I'm not careful.  But I've found that while I still have a ways to go before I've made those parts of this assignment fully unconscious routines, I am still better able to effectively react when things don't go as expected.  But I also realize that I work as part of a team and that there are aspects to my work that involve me respecting how those with whom I directly work do things.  So if one day I walk into a room and the setup I am used to arranging has been done a little differently by someone else, then I flow with it...I think a lot of us sometimes forget that in our jobs...especially those that involve processing material commodities or providing services to the consumer public...we're also charged with treating our fellow employees in a constructive and respectful manner.  And, bringing it all back to the beginning, I suspect that this area is also one where Tom Brady excels...why, oh why does he have to play for New England?

Just Finished Reading The Marvelous Land of Oz by L. Frank Baum

A few months ago I had decided to read L. Frank Baum's lengthy series of short novels about the mythical land of Oz after noticing the complete set on my sister's bookshelf when we visited her and her family back in 2017, but never got around to following up on the first book, naturally called The Wonderful Wizard of Oz...from 1900.  The written story turned out quite a bit different from the 1939 blockbuster musical movie version starring Judy Garland, but I enjoyed Baum's writing style and it was pretty funny.  Then, while recently reading Robert Heinlein's sci-fi novel Podkayne of Mars, I noticed that its protagonist Poddy, a girl in her late teens, was a big Oz fan and made numerous references to different characters in the series.  This turned my attention back to Baum and I just finished reading book number two, titled The Marvelous Land of Oz, which he had published in 1904...

In this story there is no sign either of Dorothy or the Wizard of Oz, although at least they were mentioned in passing: no reference at all was made to the Cowardly Lion.  Oz is benevolently ruled by Scarecrow while his best friend the Tin Woodman reigns over the land of the Winkies.  The story is centered around a boy named Tip who has been placed in the custody of a sinister old sorceress named Mombi.  One day, while harvesting pumpkins, he decides to play a prank on her by cutting out a face on a pumpkin and setting it up, complete with a wooden body and arms and legs, to surprise her.  Surprised Mombi is, and she decides to prank Tip in return by sprinkling life-enabling magic powder on it.  Jack Pumpkinhead, as Tip calls him, is a genial but rather stupid sort...but the sorceress threatens to turn Tip into a statue and use Jack instead to perform her chores.  So Tip sneaks out with Jack and escapes, taking with him Mombi's stash of life-powder.  They go out in search of the Emerald City where they hope the King, who is Scarecrow, will help him with his situation.  Meanwhile, there is an insurrection in Oz as the girls, led by General Jinjur and armed with knitting needles, take over and make the men do all the domestic work.  Scarecrow and company escape and seek help from the Tin Woodsman.  Meanwhile, Tip has brought a sawhorse to life with the pilfered powder...he ingeniously calls him "Sawhorse"...

No, I'm not going to tell the rest of the story.  But with this one I may have found my favorite character: a "woggle-bug"...more specifically H.M. Woggle-Bug, T.E....who after having absorbed the lessons from a school teacher after hiding out in his school, is caught one day and magnified on a screen to the students.  A distraction occurs and the enlarged bug wanders off, hence the initials H.M. (highly magnified) and T.E. (thoroughly educated).  He reminds me strongly of Milne's Owl character in the Winnie the Pooh series: very pompous and arrogant about his educational level.  But the funniest moment may have been when Jack Pumpkinhead first meets Scarecrow and agree in their amiable discussion to get an interpreter...even though they already understand each other!  Yes, there's a lot of funny stuff in this book, and unlike with the first one, I wasn't getting myself sidetracked comparing it to the movie...

Since the Oz series is now public domain, you shouldn't have trouble getting it on the Internet.  YouTube has available public domain audiobooks...that's what I used this time around...

Today's Miserable Weather, Meaningless Football Game

Today has to be one of the most miserable days of the year, at least as far as the weather is concern.  It has been raining here nonstop in the Gainesville area with no relief in sight...plus, as the day has worn on, the temperature has plummeted.  Yuck!  And on this Sunday afternoon with me off from work, it might have been a good time to watch some football on TV...except that the only game is the meaningless National Football League Pro Bowl, their version of the all-star game.  Of course, no one wants to get injured in these contests, so the defense plays super-light, everyone who gets the ball races to the sideline, and the officials are continually quick-whistling plays over before tackles can be made.  So how is this a real game?...it's a joke, that's what it is.  I was watching it for a while but finally gave up.  Besides, if your team's star player gets injured today and it affects your season next year...well, better for him to skip this game in the first place, I say.  I read that players on today's winning side will received $67,000 and the losers $39,000, while the game's MVP is to win a new car.  Well, that's good for them, I suppose, although it does nothing to whet my interest in this nonsense...

Days like this were meant to be spent at work...that is, if your job is indoors.  On the other hand, there's nothing like this sort of weather (and lousy television) to put on some hot coffee or chocolate and grab a good book to read...

A Little More Political Reflection

If a Republican other than Donald Trump...say one of the leading primary also-rans like Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio...had been elected president in 2016, I wonder how vastly different the media reaction and coverage would have been in terms of its negativity.  Trump, if anything, has made the Democratic-leaning opposition lazy in that he serves up outrageous statements and actions almost on a daily basis, insulting people left and right and making all sorts of false claims.  I have no doubt that if Cruz or Rubio were in there, we would have neither this governing-through Twitter nonsense nor the regular pandering to the political base with the campaign rallies.  Instead, their messages would have been to the American people as a whole and that, although their policies may have been just as ideologically on the right as the current president's, they would have been more persuasive and less denunciatory in nature...in other words, more presidential.  Not that the late night talk show hosts wouldn't have all sorts of nasty things to lead their shows off with against a Cruz or Rubio presidency...they'd just have to work a bit harder at it, that's all.  And I say all this acknowledging that I, myself, am a Democrat.  But look at what just happened recently in Washington...

At their annual March For Life rally in the nation's capital...one of the relatively rare protest demonstrations conducted by political conservatives...there was outrage expressed at an infamous photo and an accompanying short video of teenage boys, wearing those dumb "Make America Great Again" red hats that signify support for Donald Trump, appearing to be taunting a poor old, innocent American Indian who was just there beating a drum.  How racist those kids are, the social media reaction virally went, they should be punished...and their Catholic school in Kentucky was actually considering suspending or expelling them when the situation's true context was revealed.  The boys were just gathered there waiting for the bus to drive them back home when a different group of protesters approached and began to taunt them.  Then the Indians came, with that drummer being the one to confront the boy, not the reverse.  The young man just smiled back at the Indian, the photo was clicked, and the smear campaign began with opinion-makers taking off with the story and running with it...

It's this sort of thing that gives me pause during this time of torrential criticism of the current president and the Republicans.  True, Donald Trump with his bullying, deriding nature has assuredly set much of the tone for the backlash from the left, but I feel that with even someone else in charge it would be much the same.  I didn't vote for this president, but he is my president and I want him to succeed in the areas that he has the Constitutionally-mandated responsibility for.  And one of the most supremely important areas is our national defense, which includes protecting our borders.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: Trump was the one elected, like it or not, and Congress should be deferential to him in his role of Commander-in Chief...he, not they, should be in charge of border policy.  Trump's mistake, however, was using an issue (the border wall) to hold the federal government...and eventually, the nation...hostage with a financial shutdown.  Now any future president from either party will be able to point back to this precedent and do the same with their own pet issues...thanks a lot, Donald...

Now about this "national emergency" notion that has some screaming "dictator" and "martial law": declaring national emergencies has become commonplace during the past few administrations, regardless which party has been in power...it isn't that big of a deal, except to the ignorant.  The only possible legal glitch for Trump declaring a national emergency at the border so that he can build his wall is that he might need to demonstrate a viable way to fund it...if he declares such an emergency it will certainly go to the courts, who lately seem to be the ones deciding on our border and immigration policies.  I'd rather see everyone, from both parties, just get together, with recognized experts on the subject, and work out the best possible policy that optimizes expense with border protection.  But that involves folks in D.C. being reasonable for a change, so good luck with that...

No, this border wall issue is not what disturbs me about this president.  My biggest concern is that he has been somehow compromised by the Russian regime of Vladimir Putin and is doing his bidding, however subtlety.  It's already been established that the Russians didn't influence the 2016 election by hacking and manipulating voting machines, but they did infiltrate social media with intentions to sway the election against Clinton and for Trump.  But I imagine every country in the world (including the U.S.) with interests in other countries are always trying to influence their elections...that is, when the countries they want to affect actually hold free elections.  I don't hold Trump and his cronies responsible for collusion or conspiracy...I instead hold those American voters responsible who bought this crap and let it influence their decisions.  So is Trump somehow beholden to Putin?...that's the only thing I wonder about now.  And if Mueller can't answer that in his investigation, it doesn't do me any good in terms of resolving this whole sordid affair...

Quote of the Week...from Ernest Hemingway

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow men.  True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.                                                 ---Ernest Hemingway

Ernest Hemingway, of course, was one the greatest American authors of the twentieth century...I've read his novels The Old Man and the Sea, The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls...that last one is my favorite of his.  Most successful people, like Hemingway, are often esteemed for having risen above the masses with their chosen craft and they deserve commendation for this...I myself have a grudging admiration of standout NFL quarterback Tom Brady, despite the fact that he plays for a team I always root against.   And wanting to be better than everyone else is indeed a good goal...but only up to a point.  If that's all that is motivating us to succeed, I believe we probably will be very disappointed in the end and possibly just give up, "playing second fiddle", "backup", or "also-ran" not elements of our personal vocabulary.  I think that was the problem with another NFL player, Tim Tebow, who was more concerned about being seen as the "best" over others than working hard to improve himself into being the best player God had gifted him to be...so he left the sport.  Hemingway showed his wisdom and indicated to me by the above quote that even had he not achieved such acclaim for his writing, he still would have continued pursuing it as a personal commitment...a noble commitment.  What are the things we are committed to improving on...even without any assurance of tangible recognition from others?  I agree with Mr. Hemingway and suggest that here is where real nobility can be found...           

Just Finished Reading Podkayne of Mars by Robert Heinlein

One of Robert Heinlein's lesser known works is his 1963 science fiction novel Podkayne of Mars. In it Podkayne...or "Poddy"...lives on Mars with her parents, precocious 11-year old little brother Clark, and the infant triplets that have diverted her parents' attention and cancelled a long-desired family trip to Earth.  Yes, by all this you can assume that it's some time off in the future and humanity has colonized Mars...plus Venus as well, its extremely overheated and poisonous atmosphere still unknown at the story's writing.  And yes, there are native intelligent life forms on both planets...Heinlein mixes this "soft" science fiction with "hard" passages describing space travel in detail that makes such a scenario nearly seem plausible.  Well, the Mars senator, who just happens to be Podkayne's uncle, hears of the trip's cancellation and invites her and Clark to accompany him on a trip to Earth...with a stopover in Venus.  At this point I won't go any further revealing the plot and instead will focus on two areas: super-intelligent Clark and the story's original and altered endings...

There is a mythos in our modern society about the incredibly smart little know-it-all kid who almost magically knows advanced science, math, and technology...like Stewie in Family Guy with his time machine or Artemis Fowl with his criminal shenanigans in Eoin Colfer's children novel series. Look at young Sheldon on TV...the kid just "knows" so much more than the dumb adults around him.  Clark in Heinlein's story is another example of a child whose intellectual level is vastly beyond what one would reasonably expect from even a genius at his age.  And why is it that these brilliant kids seem to tend toward manipulation and villainy?  I don't know about you, but I'm getting sick and tired of this recurring super-smartass-scheming-brat caricature I see in books and on the screen...

Robert Heinlein wrote an ending to Podkayne of Mars that did not sit well with his publisher, who insisted that he change it...which he reluctantly did: I read the revised version.  Yet, the original is also still out there and I understand that some editions feature both endings.  Talk about a schizophrenic novel.  In any case, I don't have to read the original ending to know what's different about it...all in all I enjoyed this short book, but it's not anywhere near the quality level of the author's Stranger in a Strange Land or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress...

Weekly Short Stories: 1942 Science Fiction, Pt. 2

Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 4 (1942) may be the best book in this retrospective anthology series looking back on the best in short science fiction.  Having said that, it's also true that many of the stories within tend to be rather long, approaching novella-length.  Of the three I'm discussing today, the first two take up a lot of pages and demand more of a commitment from the reader...but they are worth it...

THE PUSH OF A FINGER by Alfred Bester
It's early in the thirtieth century and society on Earth is in a state of balance, with scientists and statisticians secretly determining...in the Prog Building in Manhattan...what works and what doesn't.  They're biggest secret, which Carmichael, a hotshot newspaper reporter, manages to discover after infiltrating the organization, is the ability to predict distant future events with excruciatingly high levels of accuracy.  A crisis has occurred with a somber discovery: at a set time a thousand years later the universe will suddenly end...and the cause seems to be man-made and traceable back to the present.  A brilliant sci-fi mystery with a ridiculously silly ending...

ASYLUM by A.E. van Vogt
My favorite tale of the book, Asylum would more appropriately be deemed a science fiction horror story which involves extraterrestrial vampires and a super race of Galactic overseers.  Earth has not yet developed the credentials to join with the Galactics and their federation of worlds (sound familiar?), but they're keeping an observer around to keep an eye on things, his identity a secret.  Meanwhile the Dreeghs also have their sights set on Earth, but their motives are different: to harvest the blood and life energies of its inhabitants.  Two of them comprise the advance team...real bad-ass villains...and they hatch a plot to use another one of those hotshot newspaper reporters...this one named Leigh...to discover the Galactic Observer's identity so that they can eliminate him.  They suspect a scientist/inventor named Ungarn who lives on a meteorite near Jupiter to be their target and manipulate Leigh into leading them to their prize.  But there are plenty of plot twists and surprises awaiting everyone, especially the reader.  One of the best...and least expected...endings I've encountered in a short story...

PROOF by Hal Clement
There is a sub-genre of science fiction called "hard" science fiction in which the author, usually highly trained in the intricacies of science and/or technology, uses his or her knowledge to make the story more realistically plausible. Proof is one such example: the author, using details of subatomic and high-energy physics, paints a picture of life...including intelligent beings...existing IN the sun...and in other stars as well.  And yes, they have spaceships, too.  But what about the planets...and how would such entities perceive these accreted masses of heavier elements so foreign to the physics and chemistry of their native sun?  Another superb ending...did I not say that this may be the best book in the series?

Next week: more from 1942 in the world of short science fiction...

Just Finished Reading Beatlebone by Kevin Barry

In 2015 Irish fiction writer Kevin Barry came out with the novel Beatlebone, in which ex-Beatle John Lennon, in 1978, temporarily flees his domesticated lifestyle he has been living in New York City with wife Yoko and son Sean...he feels the desperate need to find and then stay for three days on a remote little Irish island he had bought eleven years earlier.  He plans to just sit there and scream and scream...a reference back to the Janov Primal Scream Therapy he had famously undergone with Yoko at the close of the Beatles era.  The problem John has...and one that dominates the flow of the story...is that although he had visited this island before in 1969, now he can't remember exactly which one it is of the hundreds out there.  He has an Irish character named Cornelius drive him around, steering away the clamoring press, finding lodgings, and introducing him to other usually very annoying characters.  The language in the story is stream-of-consciousness and difficult to follow as John lets out his thoughts and interacts with others.  There is actually very little said here about either the Beatles, John Lennon's former bandmates, or Yoko One and very much about not only his early childhood and his parents...but even his parents' lives before he was born.  One thing that struck me in Barry's fictionalized account was that folks in that part of the world believed in haunted places that sometimes distorted reality, even to the point of taking people to other places and/or times...I've read of this phenomenon before in other books.  And the notion that Lennon would just suddenly take off to a remote spot from his home has a factual basis: during his 1976-79 "retirement" from music-making while raising his little boy, Yoko and John immersed themselves in a kind of astrology in which she would abruptly assign him the task of briefly traveling to another part of the world and coming back...Barry referenced such a trip to Japan in this story.  But the author laid forth the proposition that John was suffering from musical writer's block and wanted to produce new material, hence this trip to his island.  The book's title Beatlebone reveals its meaning toward the story's end, which as usual I will refrain from giving away.  Later I read some very glowing, positive reviews of Beatlebone, but I have to admit that it came across to me like another self-indulgent version of the Beatles' critically-panned Magical Mystery Tour movie. Although I think that the music of the Beatles was terrific and groundbreaking, I never got into the personality cult mentality surrounding them.  That John Lennon was such a special, elevated person that his experiences and opinions transcended those of "ordinary" folks was never something I believed, but as a reader I felt I had to "play along" just to get through the story.  I didn't like it as much as others did, but if you like artsy, stream-of-consciousness types of literature, then this one's for you...

Patriots and Rams Advance to Super Bowl on February 3rd

In the National Football League playoffs yesterday, I watched both the National Conference championship game between Los Angeles and New Orleans and that of the American Conference with Kansas City going against New England.  Ordinarily I don't just sit there and watch entire games, but this time I did this that...with both of them.  They were very entertaining and suspenseful, both with anxiety-filled final moments in regulation and eventually going into overtime.  One of my teams won and one lost...ironically I feel a bit worse about the game "my" LA Rams squeaked out against the Saints, and all because of a horribly blown call near the end of regulation.  New Orleans had been driving downfield in a 20-20 tie and looking to run down the clock as they sought to take the lead and then deny Los Angeles any time to come back.  Quarterback Drew Brees threw a strong pass at receiver Tommylee Lewis just short of the end zone...just before the ball got to him Rams cornerback Nickell Robey-Coleman slammed and decked him, the ball flying on past them.  The officials made no pass interference call although it had to be one of the most blatant penalties I ever saw.  The result was that the Saints ran out of downs too early and had to settle for a field goal, after which Los Angeles had enough time left to march down the field and get one of their own, sending the game into overtime...which they won.  Well, I'm glad the Rams won, but not like that...

In the other game the New England Patriots beat the Kansas City Chiefs as the two teams, following slow offensive starts, together scored 38 points in the fourth quarter alone.  The Patriots won the crucial coin toss entering overtime, meaning that they would probably win since KC and New England were just going back and forth trading touchdowns at the end...and Pats quarterback Tom Brady executed a long, textbook winning drive.  I'm rooting for the Rams in February 3rd's Super Bowl...or should I say more accurately that I'm rooting against the Patriots...

Super Blood Wolf Moon Eclipse Tonight

Evan McMullin, one of the people I follow on Twitter, retweeted a posting by Space.com about tonight's lunar eclipse, visible from the Western Hemisphere...here's that website link. The moon will be at one of its closest points to Earth, which explains the "super" adjective, as it passes through our planet's shadow on the opposite side of the Sun...that's what a lunar eclipse is.  And lunar eclipses always occur during the moon's full phase...in January full moons are called "wolf moons".  During this eclipse the shaded part of the moon will still be visible, but a dim, dark "blood" red...hence the quirky title that the writer of this Space.com article, Elizabeth Howell, came up with.  She also gave a timetable for this eclipse, in Eastern Standard Time:

10:34 pm: Partial eclipse begins
11:41 pm: Total eclipse begins
12:12 am: Mid-eclipse
12:44 am: Total eclipse ends
1:51 pm: Partial eclipse ends

Tonight the skies here in northern Florida are expected to be clear...and cold.  I'm looking forward to checking it out...why don't you, too?

Just Finished Reading The Wishsong of Shannara by Terry Brooks

When fantasy fiction writer Terry Brooks completed his Shannara trilogy with The Wishsong of Shannara in 1985, I wonder if he foresaw writing some thirty-odd more spinoff novels and short stories based on it.  He has his share of loyal readers, but I was initially resistant to the series when the first book, titled The Sword of Shannara, seemed too derivative of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.  But while recognizing that there will almost certainly be some borrowed themes from other fantasy series, Brooks in the second and third books of the trilogy wrote more original material.  The Wishsong of Shannara takes place a generation after the previous story as Wil and Eretria Ohmsford's daughter Brin and son Jair possess a special ability called the Wishsong...Jair's is limited to creating illusions but Brin can manipulate both mind and matter when she sings out the magic.  The parents are out of town just when the mysterious druid Allanon arrives and tells the brother and sister that evil is once again afoot, as evil murderous wraiths, allied with the gnomes and empowered by and subservient to the will of the Ildatch, a sentient book of dark magic, are in pursuit of them.  As the story develops, Brin and Jair find themselves on separate paths to try to destroy the Ildatch, which is hidden away in a protected marsh.  They each encounter allies who help them on their quests: much danger and high adventure mark this tale, as well as a lot of introspection and self-doubt among the characters.  My favorite character was the independent gnome tracker Slanter who after capturing Jair for the dark side ends up as his greatest protector.  Who, if any, will survive the ordeals and will they be able to fulfill their mission?  Guess you'll have to read it to find out...

Terry Brooks' Shannara trilogy reminded me of Isaac Asimov's Foundation science fiction series in that each successive volume jumped ahead in time instead of just being a direct continuation of the preceding book...I kind of liked that: each installment is a complete story in itself.  Now that I'm finished with the original series, I may from time to time look into some other Shannara series that Brooks wrote over the ensuing decades...  

Quote of the Week...from Marilyn vos Savant

Be able to cite three good qualities of every relative or acquaintance that you dislike.
                                                               ---Marilyn vos Savant

Marilyn vos Savant is probably most known for her weekly quiz/advice column in Parade magazine, inserted in numerous Sunday newspapers.  She's credited as having an extremely high IQ, for what that's worth, and doesn't mince words about her opinions on a wide range of subjects...some of these I'm not terribly in agreement with, to put it diplomatically.  Yet she does have a lot of wise quotes, and I picked the one above because it goes counter to popular sentiment today.  Whether it's politics, reality TV, social media, school, the workplace, or any other venue, people tend to vent negatively about others in their lives or the news without couching their criticisms with some praise and understanding.  Trying to see things from the other guy's viewpoint...which is empathy...is crucial to maintaining a balanced view of others, especially those we dislike.  We're all mixed bags with good and bad...Marilyn's advice rings true to me: instead of harping on how bad someone else is, why not put your time to better use and see them for their positive traits?  Some folks in my life are disagreeable because they don't like me either, and can probably list all sorts of reasons for this.  I can't make everyone like me, and I don't want to anyway.  And I can't always like others, either.  But everyone's got something to appreciate and recognizing that fact can potentially point to improved relationships between us...

Work, Pain, and the Politics of High Drama

The last few days for me have been a bit distracting...I've been learning and getting used to a new job assignment at work, suffering from a nagging backache, and naturally...just when I wanted to get off from work and rest and recover...a sudden, excessive amount of overtime.  Well, I think I have my new assignment down pretty well, the back is much better (but still sore), and that overtime thankfully dried up for the time being.  Still, I think I'd better wait a few days before I am ready to resume any sort of running.  As for working extra hours, part of that is my own responsibility since I signed up to get overtime: I'd just like it in more moderate amounts, please...

In spite of work and physical pain, I've been noticing what's going down in the news and am dismayed by the total level of disfunction in our elected national government.  The latest chapter in this nonsense has President Trump abruptly cancelling a secret trip by House Speaker Pelosi to visit our troops serving overseas...and in doing so betraying the secret publicly.  This is in apparent retaliation to Pelosi's hesitation in allowing him to deliver his State of the Union address on January 29th if the government is still shut down.  She has the authority to do so...the President is obligated by the U.S. Constitution to give Congress an annual report on the state of the union, but he can accomplish this with a written report.  Still, I'd like to see him deliver the speech in person...his State of the Union address last year was one of his best speeches.  Too bad Mr. Trump is incapable of sticking with a script...if ever there was someone who needs to, it's him...

And I'm sure there will be more high drama coming out of the White House, since being a drama queen is one of the things our president is truly competent in and is something that his "base" seems to relish.  What saddens me the most about all this is that I happen to agree with some of his proposals and policies, but he seems more interested in making everything an issue about himself, first and foremost.  Well, there's not a whole lot I can do about that...I feel sorry for all the federal workers who are not being paid and for those Americans who are not receiving important services due to the shutdown...

Weekly Short Stories: 1942 Science Fiction, Pt. 1

I continued my look back at old science fiction short stories by reading the first four in the anthology Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 4 (1942). This volume contained some amazing...and mostly lengthy...tales, some of which speak to us in our world today.  Here are the first four...

THE STAR MOUSE by Fredric Brown
Old science fiction stories are often full of eccentric, reclusive scientist/inventors with their quirky little projects.  A common theme back then was one who designs the first rocket to outer space...Fredric Brown used it in this story as a kindly old scientist first catches Mitkey, a little mouse formerly living undetected in his home, and then sends him up on a rocket.  While in space an unknown small asteroid, inhabited by very small, intelligent beings, intercepts Mitkey's flight and they infuse the little mammal with human-level intelligence and alter his vocal apparatus to allow him to speak...which he does in the scientist's thick German accent.  When he returns to Earth and asks someone for directions to his old home in New Jersey...well, you can see the farcical direction this is heading...

THE WINGS OF NIGHT by Lester del Rey
Two space workers soft-crash-land their ship on the moon after one of its parts malfunctions.  As they approach a very smooth area to land, the ground suddenly opens up and they go deep under the surface to the distant bottom...where an ancient intelligent being, the last of his kind, lives and has a desperate need for his race's survival.  Can the two parties communicate to help each other out of their predicaments? And what about one of the men, who tends to display bigotry toward beings different from himself?

COOPERATE--OR ELSE! by A.E. van Vogt
It is the future and humans have explored and settled far off into the galaxy, including a place called Carson's Planet. On it live the ezwal, apparently unintelligent animals that provide them food.  On a spaceship a captive ezwal, revealing its species' truly intelligent nature, has taken over the ship and killed all but one of its people...a Professor Jamieson, who escapes on down to a jungle, sea, and monster-infested nightmare of a planet with the ezwal in hot pursuit.  The ezwals want to expel humans from their planet, but to do so involves no one knowing of their intelligence...so Jamieson has to die.  But the professor realizes that in order for either to survive on this extremely hostile world, they must cooperate with one another.  This story was written at the precise moment in history during World War II in which the Democratic allied nations added another ally: the totalitarian Soviet Union, which was suffering a brutal invasion from Hitler's Nazi regime...

FOUNDATION by Isaac Asimov
I've already read and thoroughly enjoyed the five core books of Asimov's Foundation series, in which humanity, so far off in the distant future that they've forgotten their planet of origin, lives under the rule of a galactic empire. A"psychohistorian", Hari Selden, envisions that empire's eminent breakup and subsequent eons of brutal, chaotic infighting before civilization can be restored.  His strategy to drastically shorten this dark period involves setting up two scientific outposts on the opposite ends of the galaxy...but the very scientists he dispatches are ignorant of his true intentions.  Before the novels starting coming out in the 1950s Asimov had already laid out the groundwork in the 1940s with a series of short stories...this was the first.  Great ending!

Just Finished Reading Elevation by Stephen King

Last year Stephen King came out with an unusually small book...I would have missed it had I not one day been browsing the shelves of my local Books-a-Million.  I quickly put my name on a waiting list and checked it out from my library.  The book consists of the title novella plus a short story titled Laurie.  As for the story Elevation, it reminded me a little of Thinner, a much earlier novel King wrote under the pseudonym Richard Bachman.  In that tale a man who gets on the bad side of some gypsies is cursed with losing weight, no matter how much he eats.  Elevation's premise is similar: Scott Carey, a resident of that infamous fictional Maine town of Castle Rock, is progressively losing weight as well...but his paunchy, overweight appearance remains the same and he keeps feeling better!  Meanwhile a married lesbian couple is having difficulty overcoming the prejudice of the townsfolk as they generally shun their new Mexican-themed gourmet restaurant.  It is the interaction and emerging relationship between Carey and the women, along with the foreseen logical ending of his weight loss, that dictate the flow of the story. I enjoyed it without having to commit very much time to getting through it, but in the end I wished it were longer (and had a different ending)…

The short story Laurie is about a recently widowed elderly man living way down yonder in Florida.  His concerned sister gets him a little puppy for companionship: at first he objects, especially when confronted with Laurie's "accidents", but then the two bond.  And there is an adventure at the end waiting for them as they go for a walk one day...

Neither Elevation nor Laurie would make my top ten list of Stephen King stories, but for the characters he introduces with such feeling the reading is worth it.  Sometimes the weird things he makes happen to them don't make a lot of sense, but I can definitely see myself and others I know within those characters' personalities.  Check it out...

Super Bowl Teams Finalized Next Sunday

It seems like I'm following more of the NFL playoffs this year than I usually do...that's interesting seeing how all three Florida teams experienced losing seasons and missed them.  Yet I enjoyed some of the scenarios, including defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia somehow getting into the playoffs and both Los Angeles teams as well.  Teams I dislike such as New England and New Orleans got first-round byes and then went on from there to the conference championship round.  Sadly, Seattle, a team I've grown to follow over the years largely due to their head coach Pete Carroll and versatile quarterback Russell Wilson, bowed out early to Dallas.  Well, with the Eagles gone as well, my favorite of the four remaining teams has to be Kansas City with its brilliant second-year quarterback Patrick Mahomes.  They'll be hosting the Patriots in the American Conference championship game next Sunday the 20th at 6:40 PM, broadcast on CBS.  Earlier that day will feature the National Conference finale with New Orleans at home against the Los Angeles Rams, the game set for 3:05 PM with Fox carrying it.  My ideal scenario would have a Chiefs-Rams Super Bowl, but the Patriots and Saints, each franchise with its legacy of cheating and subsequent punishment, will probably prevail next Sunday...in which case I'd be forced to pull for New Orleans against despised New England.  But we'll see...

The Rolling Stones, The Who, and Me Still Hobbling Onward

The day after I wrote on this blog my tentative plan to enter an Ocala long-distance running race a week from now, my sporadic lower back pain returned, causing me to hobble around in much the same way as comedian Tim Conway's "old man" character.  I'm confident I'll recover as I have a number of. times in the past and eventually get back to hitting the road, albeit not to Ocala or anywhere else very soon.  In the meantime I'm looking at ancient rock bands like the Rolling Stones and The Who and marvel at them as they keep on touring and (very occasionally) recording.  It's a bit ironic that with the latter, their creative force, Pete Townshend, had left the band in 1983 because, like with the Beatles in 1967, he was tired of touring and wanted The Who just to be a studio band...the others strongly disagreed with him on this.  Now he's all over the place touring, and the last studio album the band released was in 2006.  But wait, they just announced a brand-new album to come out later this year!  Meanwhile, the Stones keep on touring and touring without any plans of coming out with any new original material...but with more than 300 songs in their catalog why should they?  And, after all, they did release in 2016 an album devoted to covers of old blues songs...

Oh, by the way, Paul McCartney, not to be outdone by his old rivals in the music business, has come out with yet another LP, this one titled Egypt Station.  I didn't care all that much for his music after he left the Beatles, although his first two solo releases, McCartney and Ram, were very high-quality. Yet I wonder if I shouldn't have given him more of a listen in his later works...the last song he recorded that I heard was The World Tonight from his 1997 Flaming Pie album and I thought it would have stood well as a Beatles track...

I'm still listening to the radio and trying to like the current output of "hits", but to little avail.  I'm thinking of making a listening project this year to go through the collective output of artists like McCartney, The Who, Rolling Stones, and others...including those later albums in their careers that never get any radio exposure.  And one more "by the way": Pearl Jam's releasing a new album later this year, too.  I have a strong suspicion that the worst songs of these legends of rock are still on a higher level than most of the "popular" music played today...
 

Just Finished Reading The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

When I go to my local public library I often go to the audiobooks section, often coming across books recorded in the Playaway format.  Playaway audiobooks consist of a small cartridge resembling a large MP3 player...you supply your own earphones and AAA battery.  The other day I checked out a Playaway edition of American Indian writer Sherman Alexie's young adult novel titled The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, first published in 2007.  It is told in the first person by a Spokane Indian boy, Arnold "Junior" Spirit, describing his life from his hydrocephalic condition as an infant...causing early problems and an enlarged head...and on throughout his youth in the Spokane reservation in eastern Washington state as he deals with widespread bullying and other issues.  One of his reservation school teachers notes that he is bored with the low level of education provided there and suggests he attend a "white" public school in a nearby town...Arnold does so and becomes shunned as a traitor by others in his reservation, including his best friend Rowdy.  The story continues on from there...you'll have to read it for yourself to see where it goes...

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian was a very compelling and alternately funny and sad view of what it's like to grow up on a remote Indian reservation...I've since read that the author himself is part Spokane and shared much of his own life's story in the novel.  Sadly, I also read that last year some aspiring women writers came out with complaints against him for hitting on them during some writing workshops that he was involved with.  Alexie apologized for his forward behavior, but many in the literary community still have shunned him and even withdrawn past awards.  No way do I condone his past behavior, but at the same time I think that his works should stand on their own merit.  One problem I have with celebrityhood in our culture is the tendency of people to either idolize their favorites or vilify those they dislike, instead of realizing that we're all cut from the same mold and while our misdeeds deserve criticism and sometimes punishment (and sometimes severe punishment), none of us are truly perfect and blameless.  People are complex entities and there's good and bad in all of us, believe it or not.  Sherman Alexie is clearly a flawed man and he admits it...the irony of some of those who have made him into a literary pariah of sorts is that they had earlier lauded his portrayal of people in general as being flawed as well...