MLK Day Parade Photos 2025

The Chattanooga MLK Day Parade wraps up with the Howard High School Marching Band near the mural at the corner of MLK Blvd. and Peeples St. (Jan. 20, 2025)

 

It's a chilly afternoon here in Chattanooga, TN, and I went down to watch our local MLK Day Parade. It's in the low 20's Fahrenheit (around -5 Celsius), which is considerably colder than usual for this part of the world, so the turnout was lower than usual. In the past, I've participated in the parade with my local chapter of United Campus Workers, but we didn't get organized in time this year. Since MLK Day is my favorite holiday and there's a weirdness this year as it coincides with a Presidential Inauguration, I figured I'd just go down by myself.

I took some pictures! And here they are, along with a bit of commentary. I will have a lot more commentary on the day and the state of US politics in another post, coming soon.

It has often amused me that we have a King and King intersection along the parade route.

Lookout Mountain (mentioned in the "I Have a Dream" speech from the parking lot of the church that did not hire King as pastor in the mid-1950's. Don't worry, he went down to Montgomery and down in history afterwards.

The Bessie Smith Center (the parade goes right by it)

The parade begins!

A good MLK quote for the parade

Another mural on the parade route

Obligatory selfie (I only break out the warm hat and scarf a couple days around these parts, but today was one of those days)

I also took a video of the Howard High School Marching Band's performance, but apparently Blogger is not cooperating with video uploads today. Oh, well.

So there you have it! Happy MLK Day!

Dune Part Two: Non-Spoilery First Reactions!

 

Earlier tonight I was lucky to be able to catch the early IMAX premiere of Dune Part Two five days before its official US release date of March 1! Like a lot of Dune nerds, I've been eagerly (obsessively!) anticipating this one since 2021. For those who haven't seen it yet and who aren't Kwisatz Haderachs, here are my 100% spoiler-free initial thoughts on the film!

• The show I attended was almost entirely sold out. I think there were a few open seats in the front row, but choosing a seat off to the side didn't spare me from sitting in a full row. It's probably been four or five years since I've been in a theater so packed. I had forgotten how simultaneously exhilarating and annoying it is to share a film with a few hundred people.
• How was the film? I loved it. The reviews are not kidding. This is a masterpiece. Villeneuve's Dune adaptations will go down as some of the best science fiction films of all time. And I don't say that lightly or just because you have to either 100% love or 100% hate everything in our current click-bait culture. It really is that good.
• There were several scenes where even the near-constant shuffling and crunching and shifting of a few hundred people went entirely quiet, because every single person in the theater was too mesmerized to be annoying. Even the guy next to me put down his phone for a few minutes here and there.
• Yes, there are changes from Frank Herbert's novel. Some of them are pretty big. But I loved all of them. They work in service of adapting Dune to a visual medium in the 2020's, and there are several things that serve Villeneuve's own vision, but not in a way that detracts from Herbert's. I sometimes get annoyed by narrow-minded fans who expect a film or TV adaptation to basically just film the book. But you can't do that. You shouldn't do that. And Villeneuve doesn't--to his credit. Besides, the book is always there if you want to read it--and you should!
• I was really interested to see how the film would handle some of the weirder aspects of the book, and it succeeds admirably, splendidly, at time almost overwhelmingly. I'm almost tempted to think that Villeneuve should keep making the rest of the series when things get really weird and not stop with Dune Messiah as he intends to.
• I loved Hans Zimmer's score of the first one, and I love this one just as much. Really some of my favorite film soundtracks in... well, ever.
• The actors are all amazing. Javier Bardem and Zendaya in particular get a lot more to do in this one. Florence Pugh's Irulan does more than in the novel. Christopher Walken's Emperor is a bit understated compared to previous Emperors, but I like it. Rebecca Ferguson is always one of my favorites, and she brings the commanding presence she brought to Doctor Sleep to her role here (I would follow Jessica or Rose the Hat anywhere, whether out of fear or love or some combination of the two).
• There are some funny parts. No, really. And they work.
• The Harkonnens get to shine in their evilness even more. Austin Butler can do a lot more than Elvis impersonations. We get to see a bit of the Guild, too. The Corrinos get a decent amount of screen time, and Irulan does more than write epigraphs or the weird floating head intro to Dune (1984). The record for most Irulan still goes to Frank Herbert's Dune (2000), which is one of the things I really like about the miniseries. 
• The Bene Gesserit are as interesting and terrifying as ever, maybe even a bit more. They've always been my favorite of the many factions in Dune, although some of this is colored by my love of the later books where they play a huge part.
• The Fremen are depicted in a really interesting and more nuanced way (even more so than in the book, or at least the first book). Souhelia Yacoub as Shishakli deserves a lot of credit on this count.
• Is it long? Yes. It's almost three hours. Does it feel as long as it is? No. Not at all. As if in a spice trance, time and space have no meaning while watching Dune Part Two.
• There was at least one scene in the book that wasn't in either Dune (1984) or Frank Herbert's Dune (2000), but that does appear in Dune Part Two.
• The deep and often troubling philosophical questions of the novel are there. Much more so than in previous adaptations.
• There were a few things I wanted to see that weren't included, but most of them were more than made up for by the interesting choices of Villeneuve and the other filmmakers. My fellow Dune fans, even if you don't 100% love all the choices this film makes, I think any lover of Dune will agree the changes are interesting at the very least, or maybe they even make you rethink some aspects of the story. And after all, that's one of the great things any adaptation can do. Especially with a text and deep and multi-layered as Dune.
• So overall: if you like Dune or science fiction or just fascinating bits of well-crafted cinematic weirdness, I encourage you to check out Dune Part Two! The official US release date is 1 March 2024 and slightly before or after that worldwide.

As I did for Dune (2021), I plan to write a spoilery review of Dune Part Two after I've had a chance to think about it, and maybe see it a few more times. Will my plan succeed? Only a Kwisatz Haderach can tell!

Connooga 2024!

 

Me at Connooga in 2017, which was apparently as blurry as the pre-pandemic years now feel.

After taking a few years off for the pandemic, I returned to Connooga last year (or at least for Saturday in a somewhat diminished capacity). This year Connooga is this weekend: Feb. 23-25! 

For Connooga 2024 I might try Friday and Saturday, and maybe Sunday, although duty requires I be elsewhere later that evening... for the early premiere of Dune, Part 2! (I'll be sure to share some preliminary nonspoilery thoughts of this movie I've been eagerly anticipating for three years.)

This year I won't be on a bunch of Connooga panels as I have been in the past. Unfortunately, the panel track I was part of (Deep Thought) was discontinued. Maybe next year I'll try to get on a few panels just to see how it goes.

Favorite Utopias New and Old: A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers and The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

 

I was recently in the mood for some unabashed utopian science fiction. I had been saving the second volume of Becky Chambers's Monk and Robot series for the right moment. And I've been meaning to reread all of Iain M. Banks's Culture series ever since I frequently gushed about it so much on this very blog back in the mid-2010's.

I need some time to mull it over, but I think Chambers's Monk and Robot series may be one of my all-time favorites. I’d say I want to give it a million stars if that sort of hyperbole didn’t feel contrary to its entire ethos.

I loved it so much that I couldn't think of how to review it properly. So instead I wrote this weird... review? Or whatever this is...

Considering Our "Inescapable Network of Mutuality": MLK Day 2024

 

I had a great time at Chattacon this weekend, which included a fun panel on Dune and Philosophy!

Today is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day here in the US. I was looking forward to following up my Chattacon experience with my local MLK Day march and parade, but today we're having some winter weather. The local MLK Day festivities have been postponed.

Prey (2022) and Predators

 

Back in the day (the 1980's) I was a huge Arnold Schwarzenegger fan. (To be honest, I still am.) And one of my favorite of Arnold's 80's heyday was Predator (1987). I was a kid at the time, but something about the story intrigued me. Maybe it was that it started as a Rambo-type military story and became a much weirder science fiction story. Maybe it was my nascent love of stories that turn the tables on preconceived notions, a love that has only deepened over time. Maybe I just thought the Predator was cool.

Over the intervening decades I have watched most of the later iterations of the Predator, most of which were okay but none of which quite captured the same feeling as the original for me. Still, I was really excited when I heard that the newest Predator movie would be set in the early 1700's in North America and most of the human cast would be Native American. What a cool idea!

Women's Future Month 2022: Finishing Series by Butler and Le Guin

Reading the Patternist series with a beer on a nice afternoon

March is Women's History Month, so echoing my "Black Future Month" post, this seemed like a good chance to finish two series by two of my favorite authors: Octavia E. Butler's Patternist series and Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series. Okay, so the Earthsea books aren't about the future, at least not our future. 

But Le Guin's fantasy may be about my future: I hope to do some serious academic work on both Butler and Le Guin in the future (building on the article on Le Guin I've already published), so maybe this will be a seed of some future project. Echoing a phrase from Le Guin, I might even call it something like Realists of a Larger Reality.

 

So You're Going to Quote MLK?

 

So you're going to quote Martin Luther King, Jr.? Great! Here are a few pointers.

Melancholy Utopianism: The Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson

 

The Ministry of the Future is up there with Kim Stanley Robinson's best work. Given how much I love his work, this counts as high praise from me.

If you're familiar with Kim Stanley Robinson (KSR), you'll have some idea of what to expect. A lot of wonky, nerdy details delivered in what his critics would call "info dumps," a lot of cool Big Ideas, a delightful thrashing of the "show don't tell" rule that's sure to give nightmares many creative writing teachers, and oh yeah, some characters and plot and stuff, too. (Indeed, I sometimes wonder if a writer like KSR would get published today given how he cuts against the grain.)

Spicy is the Head that Wears the Crown: Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

 

The cool old edition I got from a used bookstore sometime in the Before Guild era

Having read Frank Herbert's Dune books several times, I've always said the second volume, Dune Messiah, was my least favorite. But on this latest re-read, I feel like I've been too harsh on the second book. It's still not my favorite, but there's more to appreciate here than I previously thought.

Still the Novella King: If It Bleeds by Stephen King

 

Good job, Uncle Stevie!

I've loved King's previous novella collections, especially Different Seasons, although Full Dark, No Stars is really good, too (Four Past Midnight, which I somehow missed, is next on my list). If It Bleeds is the only one of these to have a title story, but you have to admit it's a pretty good title for a Stephen King book.

Random Thoughts, Part 16: Dune the Random Things

My series of Random Thoughts started randomly one day almost two years ago. I would wait until the exact two year anniversary of that first post, but that wouldn't be random, now would it? Add in a pandemic and some random memes, and here we are: Random Thoughts, Part 16: Dune the Random Things!

Spoilery Review of Dune (2021)

 

Rebecca Ferguson as Jessica in Dune (2021)

I've already written about my initial impressions the new Dune movie, and before that about why the Dune series is one of my favorites. Just to round out this little series of Dune content, at last I'm writing a full spoilery review of Dune (2021).

I've been excited for this movie for years, so it may be no surprise that I've seen it five times already: twice in the theater and three times on HBO. Obviously I loved it. I've noticed new things every time, and my love for the film has only grown.

Why I Love Dune

 

I recently re-read Frank Herbert's Dune to get ready for the new Denis Villeneuve film adaptation. I was thinking of a way to review a book I've read several times over 30 years, but I'm not sure that makes much sense. 

I did notice this time that, contrary to my previous review, Paul does question his own actions in the middle of the book, even if Jessica questions them more. But... what do you say about a classic that hasn't already been said?

So instead I thought I might say a bit about why I love Dune so much, why I've returned to this series over the years as one of my all-time favorites (and maybe as a bonus why I'm excited about the new Villeneuve film adaptation).

"Well, I'm back": Frodo, Sam, and Life Toward the End of the Pandemic

 

"Well, I'm back."

- Samwise Gamgee at the end of The Return of the King

I’ve been thinking lately about the impending end(?) of the pandemic on the horizon sometime later this year (hopefully? ... at least this pandemic?). 

Going back to “normal” society is going to be weird and difficult for a lot of people. I don’t even mean for introverts. I greatly dislike the tendency to bifurcate humanity into introverts and extroverts. I’ve gotten more introverted during all this, but I used to enjoy going out and being in public and seeing my friends. In the Before Times (let's call it the Third Age), I found it quite easy to be more extroverted in social contexts where I’m supposed to be speaking. This is why I like teaching in person or giving conference talks--or I did before, anyway.

 

As I start to think about post-vaccination plans, I'm more and more realizing that it will be hard to do anything without some scars of the anxieties I’ve developed in the last year. 

I thought of a metaphor recently: For many of us who bear the scars of this pandemic, returning to “normal” social interaction is going to be a lot like when the Hobbits returned to the Shire after saving Middle-Earth (hopefully without the Scouring of the Shire!). They all carried their physical and psychical scars with them, and never felt quite at home the same way again. 

Women's History Month Review Round Up 2021: Brackett, Alexander, Moreno-Garcia, and Le Guin

March is Women's History Month, and like I did in 2019, I decided to celebrate by reading and reviewing works written by women this month. I'm reviewing the 1974 science fantasy novel Ginger Star by Leigh Brackett, the 2010 modern classic on mass incarceration The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander, the 2020 creepy haunted house tale Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and--bookending the post with 70's SF--the 1975 strange little novella The New Atlantis by Ursula K. Le Guin.

I may try to keep up with my themed month reviews that I started in February for Black History Month. So stay tuned in May for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month!

Later Explorations of Earthsea: Tehanu and Tales of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin

 

I've been a huge fan of Le Guin's science fiction for about 20 years, but I didn't start reading the Earthsea books until a few years ago. I recently moved these two later books in the series --Tehanu and Tales From Earthsea--to  the top of my list to prepare for an online discussion of the Earthsea books (info here).

Dark Tower Re-Read, Book 7: The Dark Tower

The Dark Tower on the porch with a beverage

I started a Dark Tower re-read in June, and I've come to the end of the series (not counting The Wind Through the Keyhole, which I read in story order this time rather than publication order).

Book 7 is to the Dark Tower series as Jupiter is to our solar system. It's not separate from the larger system, but it has enough of its own gravitational pull to form a system of its own. You couldn't read Book 7 without having read the previous books, but there's enough going on to fill a series of its own. It's not just the longest book in word-count, it leads the others in sheer goings-on, not to mention emotional impact. Seriously, I challenge any fan to get through this one without tearing up at least a little.

It took me a long time to read this one, partly because I had a lot going on, partly because it's just a long-ass book, but mostly because ending another trip to the Tower was a little melancholy for me.

But I, for one, find the ending completely satisfying. More on that later.

We start with Jake and Callahan entering the Dixie Pig, a den of vampires, taheen, can toi, and other assorted baddies. And...

I can't really write most of this review without spoilers, so be forewarned. I will be as merciless with spoilers as King is with character deaths in this book.

New Article: "Ursula K. Le Guin's Science Fictional Feminist Daoism"

Ursula K. Le Guin

I'm thrilled to announce that my article "Ursula K. Le Guin's Science Fictional Feminist Daoism" is now available in The Journal of Science Fiction and Philosophy. You can download it here.

Horrific Analysis: Danse Macabre by Stephen King

 

Danse Macabre is another Stephen King book I've probably meant to read for 30 years. Seeing this book around is how I first learned the word "macabre." I'm glad I found a used copy like the one I remember from back in the day with that weird pink writing and creepy picture of King's face (see above). So was it worth the wait?