Visions of Paradise #156 Contents Out of the Depths...............................................................................................page 3 Ground Zero Mosque controversy ... Best Beatles Songs The Passing Scene...............................................................................................page 5 August 2010 Wondrous Stories ..............................................................................................page 9 Ivanhoe ... Year’s Best SF 13 ... The Altar at Asconel Forbidden Planet Halcyon Days .......................................................................................................page 13 John Purcell ... Brad Foster ... Lloyd Penney On the Lighter Side...........................................................................................page 16 _\\|//_ ( 0_0 ) ______________o00__(_)__00o____________ Robert Michael Sabella E-mail [email protected] Artwork http://adamosf.blogspot.com/ http://visionsofparadise.blogspot.com/ Alan White ... cover Available online at http://efanzines.com/ Trinlay Khadro … p. 8 Copyright ©August, 2010 by Gradient Press Available for the usual Out of the Depths I must warn you in advance that this entry is going to be a rant, so read on at your own risk. I am really annoyed at the public furor over a Moslem group wanting to build a multi-story community center within sight of “Ground Zero,” where the World Trade Towers collapsed. This is blatant bigotry against Moslems, which is disgraceful in a country which claims to be tolerant but whose populace often shows itself to be both selfish and narrow-minded. And what does it say when major political leaders such as Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin are in the forefront of the anti-Moslem bigotry? Both those two politicians have millions of supporters as well, which seems to me an indication of how widespread bigotry is in this country. The majority of people causing the ruckus are Christians, which is even more hypocritical since the history of Christianity is filled with more intolerance and violence than any other religion. It is pure hypocrisy that any Christians would distrust or denigrate the majority of Moslems because of some fringe groups of terrorists. I admit to being prejudiced since I have gotten close to many wonderful Moslem students, but I have no doubt that mainstream Moslems are as much devout and good people as those of any other religion. In the face of such blatant hypocrisy and bigotry, I am almost ashamed to be a Christian and an American. Fortunately a voice of reason has emerged in the ongoing debate over the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque,” and it is MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann whose commentary has been posted at Youtube. It is an incredibly open-minded and tolerant commentary which, unfortunately, will not be seen by a fraction of the people who see all the negative hype in the media. I encourage all of you to go watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZpT2Muxoo0 * Onto a more pleasant topic. A recent issue of Rolling Stone contained their ranking of the 100 best Beatle songs. Many members of my generation should find that interesting, since the Beatles were such an important part of all our childhoods. This is Rolling Stone’s top 10 songs: 1 A Day in the Life 2 I Want To Hold Your Hand 3 Strawberry Fields Forever 4 Yesterday 5 In My Life 6 Something 7 Hey Jude 8 Let It Be 9 Come Together 10 While My Guitar Gently Weeps 3 of the songs are joint Lennon-McCartney compositions (#1, 2, 5), while 2 are John Lennon songs (#3, 9), 3 are by Paul McCartney (#4, 7, 8) and 2 are George Harrison songs (#6, 10). Never one to be daunted by a list, I have compiled my own 10 favorite Beatle songs, which is not too different from the Rolling Stone list. Keep in mind that if I made this list next week, it would probably change a bit. 1 Strawberry Fields Forever 2 I Want To Hold Your Hand 3 Help! 4 A Day in the Life 5 All You Need is Love 6 Hey Jude 7 Revolution 8 Got To Get You into My Life 9 She Loves You 10 I Feel Fine This list was a lot more difficult to compile than I imagined (no pun intended (). The #10 position was the hardest, since it required my picking one Beatle song out of their entire catalog which deserved to be on the top 10. I considered such songs as “Rain,” “The Ballad of John and Yoko,” “Baby You’re a Rich Man,” “Let It Be,” “Here Comes the Sun,” and the song I selected for my original posting “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.” But the more I thought about it, the more obvious it became that “I Feel Fine” belonged on the list. In my opinion, John Lennon was a slightly better songwriter as a Beatle than Paul McCartney, but when they went their separate ways, Paul was better as a solo artist than John, in spite of the fact that McCartney is a terrible lyricist. Still only Elton John (in my opinion) can match his ability to write a melody that is both intricate and catchy. And yes, Paul has the unfortunate tendency to release some songs whose fate should be a forgotten outtake (another trait he shares with Sir Elton). You think somebody in the studio would have the guts to say, “Uh, Macca, what are you thinking?” VoP #156 / page 4 The Passing Scene Aug 2-4, 2010: For the second consecutive year, I went to a student’s graduation from Indian dance school. Last summer was Jess Shah’s recital, and this week was Neelam Upadhyaya’s graduation recital. The performances were excellent, and I saw many former students there, and I sat with Jess Hum, Jess Shah and Vikas Bhatt during the show and dinner afterwards. Why nobody should ever trust the Post Office: A few week ago I showed my friend Alan a book being offered in Hamilton Books’ remaindered catalog called Born to Kvetch, which is about Yiddish language and culture. Alan thought his mother would really enjoy the book, so I ordered a copy which he mailed to her. Alas, when she received the envelope, it was empty! So I ordered him another copy which arrived last Saturday. After it was shipped, Jean mentioned that I could have had the book shipped directly to Alan’s mother, but it was too late to make the change. To save some time, I mailed the book to Alan’s mother myself. Hopefully she will get it this time. While we were in Outer Banks, Mark & Kate’s cat Kali ate a ribbon which got stuck in her intestines and was making her throw up whenever she ate. They took her to the vet who performed surgery on her to remove the ribbon. Then the vet put a “Victorian collar” on Kali to prevent her disrupting the stitches. That collar so terrified their other cat Rocky–who is always nervous anyway–that he would not go near Kali all the while she was wearing it. This past Sunday the collar was removed, but it still took 2 days before Rocky would play with or sleep with Kali again. Fortunately, they seem to be best friends again, thankfully for both of them. Aug 6-9: Thanks primarily to Facebook, 67 people sent me birthday greetings, mostly students, including several email and Jess Shah left a voicemail on my cellphone. Obviously I was very flattered to hear from all of them. When email became common in the 1990s, it became possible to stay in touch with former students. Connecting with several of them via IM made it even easier, but now that I am on Facebook with so many of them, it is even easier staying in contact, including many who have graduated college, the ones I most commonly lose. I do send them messages and comments periodically since I fully understand that I need to take the lead if I am to stay friendly with them. I got two birthday gifts: Jean gave me the Teaching Company series Early Middle Ages, High Middle Ages and Late Middle Ages and Andy gave me the Strokes’ cd Is This It. We went to supper at Macaroni Grill, which is not a fancy restaurant, but a good one. Jean had chicken parmigiana while I had seafood with linguini. Saturday morning Jean and I walked a trail at Turkey Brook Park with a group which preserves county parks and trails. They are the same group for which Jean and Kathy maintain a trail at Schooley Mountain Park. It was a good walk, and we hope to take more monthly walks. Sunday we went to a friend’s 60th birthday party at her sister’s house in rural Pennsylvania. She and her roommate have a wonderful log cabin on a gorgeous piece of property so isolated they VoP #156 / page 5 cannot see any other houses from theirs. While I would enjoy living there, Jean prefers having neighbors she can befriend. Also there are no amenities nearby, so even food shopping is a long trip for them. Lunches with former students: One of my greatest pleasures this month has been getting together with former students. It actually started in July when I met Leslie Huang (class of ‘02) at Empire Diner for a long, leisurely lunch. She is currently teaching math at a high school on Long Island, a rare student who has followed in my footsteps. She is part of one of the funnier stories of my teaching career: About 12 years ago, during the first week in September, one of the teachers came to tell me that he had two misplaced immigrant students in his low-level freshman algebra class. That was not unusual, since the guidance department invariably places immigrants in lower classes than they belong without ever consulting me.