The Summer That Was

Okay, I officially feel sorry for my two daughters – Summer 2019 has been the fastest summer ever on record. Seems like only last week I was attending graduation ceremonies. Now, we’re gearing up for the tenth and sixth grades – high school and middle school.

Once again the girls had an awesome summer. I better not hear of therapy bills from future them due to a “horrible childhood.” Aside from our awesome early-August week down in Hilton Head (kayaking, paddle-boarding, biking, swimming, fireworks-watching, and on, and on, and on), they spent two separate weeks visiting their grandparents over in the Pennsylvania woods. Little One saw a half-dozen games of her beloved Yankees over in the Bronx. Patch spent a week in soccer camp. We spent coin on a sitter to help drive them around to malls and parks and libraries in the afternoons. While I was slaving away at the payroll mines, they were having a damn good summer.

How about Hopper here? Let’s see …

Books? As far as reading goes, it was a good summer. I put away sixteen books; the best of which being The Bridges of Toko-ri by James Michener, The Warrior Ethos by Stephen Pressfield, both highly recommended, and A Galaxy in Flames by Ben Counter, a relay nice non-PC SF. The worse was one of those normally-decent Very Short Introductions book, this one on Thomas Aquinas. Why can’t modern authors get Aquinas right? Oh yeah …

Movies? I really liked the gator flick, Crawl, I caught one night with my buddy after a couple of beers and mixed drinks. Also enjoyed, much to my surprise, The Meg, watched one night when the girls were all scattered about the country and I had the house alone with the dog. Got caught up in the hype of the corny Zombie Tidal Wave, but only made it a half-hour in before I left for, well, a better use of my time.

Music? Unlike my usual self these past few years, I listened to a ton of music, most of it Beatles, mostly Revolver and The White Album, with a bit of Magical Mystery Tour thrown in. Listened to some George Harrison, some early Journey, as well as my favorite opera, Das Rheingold, and my one of my favorite symphonic composers, Anton Bruckner.

As far as the crawlspace between my auditory organs, I began the summer deeply immersed in Theravada Buddhism. Then I re-oriented toward traditional Catholicism. Then Christian Science care of Mary Baker Eddy piqued my wee early morning interest. Then, a return to traditional Catholicism. Then a detour to existentialism, care of Jean-Paul Sartre and some internet dude who says Life has no Meaning, and Here’s How to Be Okay With That. Then I fell back into the arms of traditional Catholicism. Notice a trend here? Me too. Now to figure out why the pattern keeps repeating.

The day job is getting quite busy. Extraordinarily so. I received a bonus back in July for a project I did late in 2018, a bonus just about equal to what I earned doing the tax thing at night. I’m working on a similar project so I think I can expect a similar bonus. This fact, plus the fact I may be moving up there, plus the fact the wife is still gung-ho on moving us across country (she’s had a dozen interviews with a handful of companies, all of which she’s in the middle of lengthy hire processes), plus Patch now resuming travel soccer and travel basketball – all this means that I think I’m not going to do the tax thing this January. I may go back the following year, I may not. But right now I have enough on my plate that I need evenings free.

Yet I feel I can be doing more. Should I actually start promoting my science fiction book? Revamp it? Create a website for it? Finish that second novel (it’s about 95 percent done) and do all the above to that one? Start a bunch of differently-themed websites? I dunno. Probably do one or a couple. Or maybe the whole thing and more.

What’s on the immediate horizon? Well, aside from the previous paragraph, we’re making a concerted effort to make the house sellable. You’d be surprised how much accumulates in fifteen years, and how much upkeep a house needs, especially a house owned by a guy who’s all thumbs. I’m slowly getting back into shape, lifting weights and walking with the Mrs. Despite a strong April and May, I actually went off the deep-end this summer and now weigh the heaviest I’ve ever weighed in my life. I’ve also been bitten again by the astronomy bug (possibly after marveling at the constellations seen from our balcony down at Hilton Head), so I may break out the telescope and go planet hunting.

Should be an exciting Fall …

What if the Moon...

was replaced by other planets in the night sky at the same distance?

I’ve often wondered – and have had pretty neat dreams – about this…

(Best watched on full screen)

No Saturn, though, which is kind of a bummer. But there are plenty other videos like this out on that youtube thing.

Despisers of the Body

I wish to speak to the despisers of the body. Let them not learn differently nor teach differently, but only bid farewell to their own bodies – and so become dumb.

“I am body and soul” – so speaks the child. And why should one not speak like children?

But the awakened, the enlightened man says: I am body entirely, and nothing beside; and soul is only a word for something in the body.

The body is a great intelligence, a multiplicity with one sense, a war and a peace, a herd and a herdsman.

You say “I” and you are proud of this word. But greater than this – although you will not believe in it – is your body and its great intelligence, which does not say “I” but performs “I”.

- Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Needless to say, I am coming around to this viewpoint more and more, especially of late.

As one who has been at war with my body – or shall I say my body has been at war with me over what I’ve done to it – I am feeling stronger every day that I need to have a physical metanoia, a come-to-Zarathustra moment. A lot of the spiritual blockage I feel may just very well be due to the physical blockage that’s been building up over the years, a dam threatening to burst, held together by spit and dirt and a little Dutch boy’s unspoken prayers.

The last worthy effort I made to reclaim my body, the summer of 2015, changed my life more powerfully than anything since that conversion experience I had back in the spring of 1992 when I renounced hedonism and read every jot and tittle of the Good Book. (And, also like that spring of 1992, my renaissance lasted four or five months until my old evil habits – “the despisers of the body” – came in to reclaim the house.)

I’m gonna lift some weights now.

Racist

So, after reading a whole bunch of news articles during lunch today, I realized that the definition of the word racist must not mean what I’ve always thought it meant. You know, a racist being someone who believes that races other than his are inherently inferior. But that doesn’t seem to be the way most of the media apply it.

Unfortunately, I believe the following has to be clearly stated, based on and contrary to contemporary popular usage:

Racist =/= Conservative

Racist =/= Someone critical of Progressive policies

An example? Okay.

I’d much rather the Supreme Court consisted of nine black conservative women as opposed to nine white liberal males.

Does that make Hopper a racist?

N.B. “=/=” means “does not equal”

To Strike Fear in His Opponent’s Heart

Why does every other pitcher in Major League Baseball c. 2019 seek to look like a gas station attendant?

Surely there are more intimidating images to cultivate, no?

Book Review: Michael Strogoff

© 1876 by Jules Verne

A few weeks ago at our summer rental down in Hilton Head, I came across a cash of gnarled yellow paperbacks on a shelf, along with a card: IF YOU TAKE A BOOK, LEAVE A BOOK.

I took this as an invitation. In exchange for James Michener’s 112-page The Bridges of Toko-ri, I plucked the 253-page Michael Strogoff, by Jules Verne, off the shelf and stashed it into my travel bag. Last night I finally finished it, after a ten-day read.

What did I think? It’s my second Verne book put away this year (I read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea back in January). As a kid I loved all the movies made from the man’s oeuvre, and cracked a few of his novels via the Bookmobile back in the 70s.

I was very excited going in. I do enjoy losing myself in long voyages in fantastical lands. After all, The Lord of the Rings is my favorite book. Michael Strogoff promised a five-week, 3,600-mile journey through 19th-centurary Tsarist Russia. That seemed long and fantastical enough for me. I jumped into it with mucho gusto. Er, priyatno poznakomit’sya, I mean.

The plot is simple enough. There’s an uprising in Siberia, and city after city are falling to the invading Tartar armies, aided by a Russian traitor, Colonel Ivan Ogareff. The Internet of the time, telegraph wires, have been cut and communication between the Tsar in Moscow and his brother, the Grand Duke in Irkutsk, capital of Siberia, is nonexistent. Ogareff’s nefarious plot to betray the Duke is uncovered, and the only way a warning can be sent is by courier – a man tough and gritty enough to survive war-torn Siberia.

Michael Strogoff volunteers, and we travel with this rugged stoic woodsman over the next thirty chapters.

And it’s a journey for no mere mortal: “Michael Strogoff was a man certain of his road and devoid of doubt or hesitation, and in spite of the melancholy thoughts which possessed him he had preserved his clearness of mind, and made for his destined point as though it were visible on the horizon.” Were we all but a fraction of the man Michael Strogoff embodies.

My paperback Michael Strogoff, with my dog

But the poor courier undergoes one brutal ordeal after another. Warding off polar bear attacks, avoiding exploding shells in the middle of an artillery attack, fighting off wolves on ice floes adrift on a sea coated with petrol, enduring capture and torture at the hands of the evil Tartars, and all while eluding gypsy (“Tisgane”) spies working for Ogareff. And those Tartars are truly despicable. They snipe away at fleeing villagers trapped on floating sheets of ice. They bury a poor soul up to his neck in the frozen Siberan tundra for the crime of protecting a young girl’s purity. And, worse of all, something cringingly terrible happens to Michael Strogoff in their hands – he’s blinded!

How can he complete the mission and save the country he loves and the woman he’s fallen in love with?

Critics consider it one of Verne’s greatest works. I think it’s up there. It’s as close to the Platonic Form of adventure travelogue the author popularized in the late 19th century as any other of his works. This would have been great as a 1950s Cinemascope production, something like a DeMille-ian version of Around the World in Eighty Days.

I give it a strong B. Mainly because it was a tad too lengthy, weighted too much on the side of verbose exposition as opposed to classic witty Vernesian repartee. I wanted more of this, an early interchange between the French Alcide Jolivet and the English Harry Blount, foreign correspondents (and possibly spies) stationed in Mother Russia:

“What,” said the first, “are you on board this boat too, my dear fellow, you whom I met at the imperial fete in Moscow, and just caught a glimpse of at Nijni-Novgorod?”

“Yes, it’s me,” answered the second dryly.

“Well, really, I didn’t expect to be so closely followed by you.”

“Indeed! I am not following you, sir. I am preceding you.”

“Precede! Precede! Let us march abreast, keeping step, like two soldiers on parade, and for the time, at least, let us agree, if you will, that one shall not pass the other.”

“On the contrary, I shall pass you.”

“We shall see that, when we are on the theatre of war, but till then, why, let us be traveling companions. Later, we shall have both time and occasion to be rivals.”

“Enemies.”

“Enemies, if you like. There is a precision in your words, my dear fellow, which is particularly agreeable to me. One may always know what one has to look for, with you.”

“What is the harm?”

“No harm at all. So, in my turn, I will ask your permission to state our respective situations.”

“State away.”

Et cetera, et glorious cetera.

The main beef I had with the book, though, was that this book, more than just about any other I’ve read, desperately needed a map! Every page was so chocked full of the names of cities, villages, districts, mountains and mountain ranges, rivers, lakes, that my eyes began to glaze over. A map would have helped translate everything for me into a nice meaningful spatial relationship.

And then there was the issue of the protagonist. Michael Strogoff – and, oddly, Verne refers to this character by both his first and last names 99 percent of the time he’s mentioned – is almost a male Mary Sue. Perfect perfection perpetually. Even his love interest is a (true) Mary Sue, at least in a Victorian sense. (She does not kick the butt of any Tartar soldiers three times her weight and muscle mass.)

However, it was redeemed by a good twist in the final pages that truly surprised me – I did not see it coming (those who’ve read the book, see what I did there?). Overall, a fun read, though it could use a little more Blount and Jolivet and their entertaining back-and-forth, a little less grim consequences of pre-modern warfare, and about a hundred-page trim-down.

P.S. A verst, the ubiquitous unit of length found on every page in Michael Strogoff, is the approximate equivalent of two-thirds of a mile. Throughout the book Michael travels 5,280 versts.

Courage

August Doings

Busy busy busy here. Better busy than not, idle hands and devil’s work and all.

On the 3rd the girls and I and the Mrs. drove down to Hilton Head, South Carolina for our annual summer pilgrimage. The trip down took most of the day, fourteen hours. We left around 6:30 am and arrived on the island at 8:30 pm, me taking driving shift one and three for nine hours total and the wife the middle shift for five. Once there, famished, we stopped at the wonderfully named café “World of Beer.” I had me two delicious ice cold IPAs, perfect complement to the southern humidity and hospitality as the skies darkened and the silvery sliver of the moon lit up Broad Creek, the waters that divide Hilton Head in two.

The next six days were insanely active with insane activities. We kayaked for two hours up and down the Creek, alert for dolphins and birds of prey. The girls and I rented bikes (Little One and I on a tandem – a bicycle built for two, Patch on a solo) and bi-, tri-, and quadrisected the island in search of a notable thrift shop over the course of a long afternoon. Patch and mom paddle-boarded while I hounded the docks, photographing them going out and coming in, then trying to keep my sunburnt hide out of trouble. Overall I downed a dozen Coronas and a dozen local IPAs. We ate like royalty. We also began each day with a 2-3 mile hike.

I had the best fish tacos of my life Wednesday afternoon.

Books! I brought my stash of Very Short Introductions but only got through one – Galaxies. Extremely interesting, and re-kindled my interest in astronomy. Why Galaxies? Well, on our balcony, overlooking the marsh and the creek, shone the Big Dipper, Ursa Major, and Polaris, with all its constellations in pinwheelish array. The moon was waxing from New to First Quarter, and light pollution was a minimum upon the waters, so the stars glimmered bright and jewel-like.

I also finished Galaxy in Flames, book three of a 51-book series Patch discovered for me last year, a wonderfully non-PC science fiction military epic taking places some 30 centuries in the future. So non-PC I feel it should be outlawed. (Probably will at the rate society’s slipping.) More about that, as well as the book series, in future posts.

Getting away from the whole “Galaxy” theme, I also picked up and read James Michener’s The Bridges of Toko-ri from the library’s book sale. A slim 112 pages, I put it away in two hours. Well worth it, A+, one of the best books I’ve read in a long time. I highly recommend it. Engrossing, nerve-wracking, touching, a tale of the Korean War, when men were still men and the women were still women, and communism was still bad. Loved it, and it struck a chord with me. Maybe I’ll search out the movie when it plays next on TCM.

At our rental there was a bookshelf with a card – “IF YOU TAKE A BOOK PLEASE LEAVE A BOOK”. So I left Toko-ri, and took Michael Strogoff by Jules Verne. This was a gnarled ancient paperback that I would have bought off the Bookmobile as a youngling, a novel by Verne I’ve never heard of before. It details the dangerous journey of a woodsman trekking the Siberian wastes with a desperate letter from the Czar and rebels on his heels. Oh, and once we did find that thrift shop I bought two more paperbacks – The Prisoner of Zenda, which I read over a couple of hours, and Arthur C. Clarke’s Worlds of 2001, his take on what Space Odyssey means, which I’ll read later this September.

My mother-in-law, a gourmet chef, cooked us swordfish steak one night, regular steak another, and then a fou-fou cheese macaroni dish to wow the girls. Little One impressed her Nana by cooking a chicken and pasta dish she’s been working on. We watched Cubs and Yankees games in the evening on her MLB network, and watched fireworks from our balcony mid-week. We swam in two different pools and lounged in a hot tub. The girls went to the beach to dip their toes in the Atlantic. I stayed behind, and was rewarded with a near-beheading as a 4 x 5 foot twenty-five pound framed glass picture above the door to our place unexpectedly dropped ten feet off the hook to the floor. But despite this and some radioactive-like sun damage on the legs, all in all, a good time was had by all.

Got back and after a recovery day Sunday had to process payroll at my day job. Lost a full day-and-a-half of prep, so that was quite stressful. I put in four hours OT which they don’t pay, which means later in the week I get to leave early. Then, last night, my first tax meeting with the night job. Man, these four months blew by like c. (That’s a physics reference.) I got my scorecard for last year’s performance and a map of what preseason Tax Season 20 looks like. Ugh. But I should make some decent money.

So, friends, that’s the August doings. More stuff, soon.