Monthly Archives: August 2021

Blaney wins, Reddick’s in, and The most ridiculous race ever

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

Before we recap NASCAR’s final race of the regular season and list the ten drivers who have made the playoffs we have to tell you about a Formula One race that lasted less than a lap.

The Belgian Grand Prix never saw a green flag.  No driver earned points for fastest lap because every lap was run behind the pace car, or as they call it in F1, the safety car.  A relentless downpour was the culprit, but so was the series’ policy of running a race on the day it was scheduled to be run.

Even if it never was a race.  Even if the finishing positions were the starting positions.

Here’s how it all came down:

First, torrential rain came down.  Then the scheduled start time came down.  No go. After a           three-hour wait, the safety car led the field out of the pits.  The competitors did the ceremonial formation lap but did not halt for the usual standing start. Instead, they kept circulating for two more laps and returned to the pits, never to turn go out again.

The official time of the race was three minutes, 27.01 seconds.

Formula 1 rules say a race is official after completion of just two laps.  The rules say the final finishing order is determined by positions on the lap before the suspension of the race.  Thus, the Grand Prix of Belgium, 2021, goes into the history books as lasting one lap, with pole-sitter Max Verstappen the winner with George Russell, who qualified second giving the Williams team its first podium finish since 2017, and giving defending F1 champion Lewis Hamilton third, his starting position.

Points are usually awarded to the driver who achieves the fastest lap.  There was no such lap in this, uh, event.

Racefans.net says the race actually lasted less than one lap because there is a 124-meter offset between the start line and the finish line. Therefore, says the site, the race did not lost 7.004 kilometers, the length of one lap, but only 6.88 kilometers.

All three of the podium drivers apologized to fans who waited throughout the rain but only got to see an almost-race that has been described with various derogatory words in the European media.

Because the race fell 32 laps short of reaching 76% of its distance, the points were reduced by half.  Verstappen, by “finishing first” received 12.5 points.  Hamilton’s third was worth 7.5 points.  He now leads Verstappen in the standings by three.

Hamilton called the event a “farce” said he hopes the fans get their money back.  There’s been no comment from F1.

However, Motorsport.com is reporting that Formula One CEO Stefano Domenicali “is eager for discussions with the sports stakeholders,” and F1 Race Director agrees. “We’ll look at a whole lot of things that we can all look at, to see what everyone wants,” he says.

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Now, to a race that was a race.

(NASCAR)—The last race of NASCAR’s regular season was a must-win situation for most of te field, a contest between teammates for the last playoff spot, and a second straight win for Ryan Blaney.  The race went an extra five laps because a scramble for positions with thirteen laps to go saw eight cars get tangled up, leading to a stoppage of the race.  Eleven cars got together in the first overtime attempt for a finish and nine cars got wadded behind Blaney on the last lap.  The race finished under the yellow flag with Chris Buescher trailing Blaney to the finish.  However, Buescher’s car failed a post-race inspection and was disqualified, leaving him last in the final standings and Bubba Wallace second.

The last playoff spot had been in contention between Childress Racing teammates Tyler Reddick and Austin Dillon. Dillon was caught up in the crash on the last lap.  Reddick, whose car was damaged in the wreck 13 laps from the end, was able to keep going after some quick repairs in the pits, and finished fifth.

Reddick was 16th in the standings after the first 12 races with only one top-ten finish. He had climbed to 11th going into the Daytona races, posting nine top tens in the last fourteen races. His fifth on Saturday night is his best finish of the year.

Blaney heads into the playoffs with two straight wins, three for the year, and second-seeded behind regular-season points champion Kyle Larson.

The first of ten playoff races will be at Darlington next Sunday.  The drivers who will run for the championship are Larson, Blaney, Martin Truex, Jr., Kyle Busch, defending champion Chase Elliott, Alex Bowman, Denny Hamlin, William Byron, Joey Logano, Brad Keselowski, Kurt Busch, Christopher Bell, Michael McDowell, Aric Almirola, Reddick, and Kevin Harvick.  Only Hamlin, Reddick, and Harvick have yet to win this year.

(Photo Credits: Formula 1, Bob Priddy)

 

 

The Joy of Rest

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(I know of a top-rank executive who would close his office door each afternoon so nobody would see him taking a nap.  I took some ribbing from my news staff from time to time because along about 2 p.m., I would find a long sound file and play it back so my computer screen appeared as if I were listening to something while I slipped into a “personal screen saver mode” for a few minutes. I always thought those moments helped me cope with 70-hour work weeks.  Dr. Frank Crane, our former Presbyterian minister turned popular newspaper columnist a century ago knew the value of such things as part of his advice to—-)

KEEP FIT

Ford, the automobile man, stated in his testimony before the Industrial Commission that he gets more and better work out of men at eight hours a day than at ten.

It is a law that holds good everywhere. The first duty of a worker is to keep himself fit. And an hour’s labor when he is up to the mark, bright, keen, and enthusiastic, is worth three hours’ effort when he is fagged.

“Keeping everlastingly at it brings success” is a lying motto; it rather brings poor results, slipshod products, and paresis.

Rest and recreation are the best parts of labor. They are the height to which the hammer is lifted; and the force of the blow depends on that height. To go ahead without 107let-up is to deliver only a succession of feeble, ineffective blows.

Get all the sleep you can. Stay abed all day occasionally. Learn to be lazy, to dawdle, to enjoy an empty mind; then, when you are called to effort, you can hit with ten times the power.

The higher the quality of your work, the more necessary it is that you approach it only when you are at your best.

This is especially true of intellectual effort. You can tell, when you read a story or an article, whether it is tainted with exhaustion; it is dull, lifeless putty.

Those who court the quality of brightness, but do not keep their bodies in trim, often resort to artificial stimulants. Stephen Crane said that the best literature could be divided into two classes: whisky and opium.

Intelligent people ought not need to be told that this is suicide. The best form of enthusiasm is the natural reaction of one’s system after a period of relaxation.

The pestiferous “work-while-you-rest” apostles are ever after us to “improve our spare time,” study French during lunch, geometry while going to sleep, and history during recess. But spare time ought to be wasted, not improved.

An hour or so at the ball-game, a contest at tennis, a long and aimless walk, a party at cards, a chess match, or a time spent in jolly talk with friends are not waste; they mean restored strength, upbuilt mental acumen, the doubling of efficiency when work is to do.

Learn to let go. Learn to relax utterly when you sit down. Learn to let every faculty lie down when you lie down, and rest whether you sleep or not.

The more thoroughly you do nothing when there is nothing to do, the better you can do something when there is something to do.

The very cream of life comes from rest. The blush, the aroma, the shine of your best work lie in the hours of idleness massed behind it. The secret of brilliant work is in throwing every atom of your reserve force into it. Perpetual exertion begets mediocrity.

“Keep fit.”

That is a better rule than “Keep at it.”

Notes from a Quiet Street  (Hot Summer Days & Nights Edition)

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We have officials from Missouri and many other states who are threatening to punish school districts and local health departments, in particular, if they institute mask mandates.  Our Attorney General, Eric Schmitt, is the chief guardian against local mask mandates and he now has a class action lawsuit forbidding school districts from having the mandates. He says parents and families should decide if children wear masks, not those who act in loco parentis when hundreds of children are together.  Parents and families, he says, should make decisions based on science and facts—-as if officials in charge of hundreds of children in close contact with one another can’t make decisions based on science and facts.  Or should not be allowed to make decisions based on science and facts.

The lawsuit also cites a low COVID death rate among school children.

Isn’t one child dying from this plague too high a death rate?

We find all of this energy by governors and attorneys general—almost unanimously Republicans—on this issue peculiar.

Remind us again which party is it that does the most griping about government over-reach, especially the federal government telling states (who know what’s best for their citizens) what should be done.

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One thing we’ve noticed about the pandemic, and now “the pandemic of the un-vaccinated,” is that no preacher has tried to capitalize on it as God’s punishment for this or that nation condoning this or that whatever.  Perhaps it is because all nations, whatever their faults, are fighting this thing—and deciding what human trait is being punished is impossible to determine, even by those who in the past have claimed exclusive knowledge of God’s intent.

But maybe God can’t get in a word edgewise amidst all of the conspiracy cacophony that has helped give the pandemic new vigor.

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There’s been a slew of book released revealing more about the more chaotic last chaotic days of the Trump administration. It is unlikely—we certainly hope it is unlikely!!—that we will ever again see so many books from so many insiders so critical of a president. But there’s one insider book we are waiting for although it might not come until the author determines that he will be more benefitted than damaged by his words.  Potential bombshell-author Mike Pence seems to think the success of his future is still too closely tied to his recent past to discuss it.

But, boy oh boy, the tales he could tell…….

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We notice, by the way, that the former VP is becoming more visible on the public speaking circuit.  He’s hitting some of the big venues—a few weeks ago he repeated his lamentable attack on Critical Race Theory at the inaugural Feenstra Family Picnic in Sioux Center, Iowa.

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Watching the drought envelop the West, we are reminded of some jokes that we heard back in the very hot summer of 1953 while growing up on our little Illinois farm.  That was the summer when the thermometers reached the 90s in late May and the heat wave ran well into September with several days in the triple digits.  In fact, the last 90-plus day was not until October.  Few homes or cars were air conditioned and I can recall my mother closing the curtains in the morning to keep out the sun during the day.

It was so hot that I saw three dogs chasing a tree.

We got a little rain one day and we sent what was in our rain gauge to the University to be analyzed. It came back only 35% moisture.

That was the winter is snowed a little bit but the snow was so dry we just shoved it into the ditch and burned it.

Not sure but those might have been told by Sam Cowling on Don MacNeill’s Breakfast Club that broadcast from Chicago for 35 years on the NBC Blue Network (which became ABC Radio) and is known as the program that created morning talk and variety as a viable radio format.

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Several months ago we told the story of a Cole County man who got married into a family situation that sounded like the story told in the song, “I’m My Own Grandpa.”

Well, we’ve found another one.  From the Sedalia Capital, a newspaper founded when Sedalia was making an ill-fated run at taking the seat of government away from Jefferson City, February 21, 1925 issue.  Page 5 has a picture of a nice-looking lady captioned, “Miss Ruth Davis’ marriage to her stepbrother, Andrew Jean Stormfeltz at Kansas City, Mo., made her mother also her stepmother and her mother-in-law, and her stepfather her father-in-law. She’s her own stepsister-in-law.  Figure it out.”

We’re not genealogist enough to know, but would that make their children their own cousins, or their own aunts and uncles, step or otherwise?

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Racing: Championship chases tighten

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor.

Why is this young man happy?

—because he’s Pato O’Ward and he has become the points leader for the INDYCAR championship with three races left in the season.  (Actually, he’s not celebrating in this picture; he’s responding to fans a week earlier at Indianapolis.)

This man has hit another milestone:

Will Power had to sit in the pits protecting his ears when competitors tried to beat his qualifying speed.  They did not and Power picked up his 63rd INDYCAR pole, putting him within four of Mario Andretti’s career record.

O’Ward might have taken the points lead but he came up just short of beating Josef Newgarden to the checkered flag at the World Wide Technology Raceway, where the St. Louis skyline can be seen from the track at Madison, Illinois. Newgarden and three teammates dominated the top five finishing positions in the race; only O’Ward’s runnerup position kept Team Penske from going 1-2-3

Newgarden beat O’Ward by less than six-tenths of a second in a race bedeviled by early yellows and late twists that took some top competitors out.  The win, Newgarden’s third at the track, moves him past Scott Dixon into third place in the points. He led more than half of the race.

 

 

Newgarden took the lead from Colton Herta, who had led 101 of the first 185 laps but dropped out when he broke a drive shaft leaving the pits.

Palou, who started 21st, had charged to tenth when he was caught up in a three-car crash on the 65th lap, relegating him to 20th place. The crash let O’Ward overhaul Palou, the points leader for most of the season and now puts him up on Palou by ten points. Palou has had two terrible finishes in a row, counting his 20th at WWTR when he was caught up in a three-car crash before the race was half done.

Scott Dixon, who went into the race third in points, was forced to the garage area for repairs after another three-car incident. Although his crew made his car roadworthy again, Dixon was so far behind that he turned laps while some others dropped out, elevating him in the final results. He packed it in after running 100 laps, enough to get him to 19th.  His withdrawal from the race ended a string of 28 straight races in which he had been running at the end.

INDYCAR resumes its season September 12 in Portland, Oregon.

Switching to cars with fenders:

This fellow is relieved although he finished 14th in the NASCAR Cup race at Brooklyn, Michigan. That was good enough to lock him in as the 15th driver in NASCAR’s 16-driver playoff field.

Kevin Harvick had to make it on points this year because he has failed so far to extend his eleven-year streak of winning at least one CUP race.  He does have eleven more races in this season to snag a win.

The win at Michigan went to Ryan Blaney. It’s Blaney’s second win of the year. He got a push from competitor Kyle Busch on the last restart that gave him the lead he then defended for the last eight laps of the race, the only laps he lead in the whole race.

Blaney beat William Byron to the finish line by 0.077 of a second, the closest NASCAR finish in Michigan International Speedway history since timing and scoring went electronic.  Blaney, who finished second on the Indianapolis road course the weekend previous, started third at WWTR but didn’t think he had a car as good as the starting position indicated.

His win and Harvick’s clinching of 15th place on points leaves only one race left to determine that 16th driver.  And that race next Saturday night is at Daytona, where the unexpected is expected.  Tyler Reddick has a 29-point lead over teammate Austin Dillon.  Nobody else is close enough to become the 16th driver because of his number of points.  And Reddick and Dillon could be eliminated if someone who has not won a race this year wins at Daytona.

Dillon was in the playoffs last year. Reddick was not.  Two other active drivers will not repeat in the playoffs unless one of them wins Saturday—Matt DeBenedetto or Cole Custer.  Clint Bowyer, the fourth driver in the 2020 playoffs, has retired to the broadcast booth.

Forty drivers are entered for Saturday night’s race meaning two dozen will be trying to be number 16.

(Photo credits: Bob Priddy, Rick Gevers)

Check your fly

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(There is a fly that insists on sitting on the ring finger of my left hand, or on my arm, as I write this introduction to another of Dr. Frank Crane’s musings on life.  I cannot ambush it; it senses my attack and flees a split second before my other hand comes down on it.  It is a stupid fly because it does not learn of its potential ultimate punishment and continues being annoying. Dr. Crane thinks flies are more than nuisances.  And they are more than insects, in fact there are—-)

HUMAN FLIES

Oh for a human fly-swatter! That is, for some sort of a swatter that would obliterate the human fly.

The most prominent trait of a fly is his ability and disposition to bother. He is essential, concentrated botheraciousness.

He is the arch intruder. He is the type of the unwelcome. His business is to make you quit what you are doing and attend to him.

He makes the busy cook cease her bread-making to shoo him away. He disturbs the sleeper to brush him off. He is president and chairman of the executive committee of the amalgamated association of all pesterers, irritators, and nuisances.

The human fly is the male or female of the genus homo who is like the housefly.

Some children are flies. They are so ill bred and undisciplined that they perpetually annoy their mother until her nerves are frazzled, and make life miserable for any guests that may be in the house. It may be well to be kind and thoughtful toward the little darlings, but the first lesson a child should be taught is to govern himself as not to be a bother.

There are respectful, considerate, and unobtrusive children alas—too few!

There are fly wives. Realizing their own pettiness they gain their revenge by systematically irritating the husband. They make a weapon of their weakness. They soon acquire the art of pestering, nipping, and buzzing, keep the man in a perpetual temper, and blame him for it. You can’t talk to them. Nothing can cure them but an eleven-foot swatter. And these are not for sale.

Some men are just as bad. Married to a superior woman such a man is inwardly galled by his own conscious inferiority. So he bedevils her in ways indirect. He enjoys seeing her in a state of suppressed indignation. He keeps her on edge. His persecution is all the more unbearable because it is the unconscious expression of his fly nature. Also for him there is no cure but to wait till he lights some time and swat him with some giant, Gargantuan swatter. And they’re all out of these, too, at the store.

There are office flies, likewise, who get into your room, occupy your extra chair, and buzz you for an hour upon some subject that you don’t care a whoop in Halifax about. Your inherent politeness prevents you from kicking them out, humanity will not let you poison them, and there is a law against shooting them. There ought to be an open season for office flies.

Where the human flies are proudest in their function of pestiferousness, however, is in a meeting. Wherever you have a conference, a committee meeting, or a convention, there they buzz, tickle, and deblatterate. They keep the majority waiting while they air their incoherence. They suggest, amend, and raise objections. They never do anything; it is their business to annoy people who do things.

I do not wish to seem unkind to my fellow-creatures, but it does seem as if to all legislatures, conventions, and other gatherings there should be an anteroom where the human flies could be gently but efficaciously swatted.

There are Senate flies, as well as House flies, politicians whose notion of their duty appears to be that they should vex, tantalize, and heckle the opposing party at every point.

There are fly newspapers, whose only policy seems to be petty, vicious annoyance.

There are fly preachers, with a cheap efficiency in diatribe and sarcasm, and no wholesome, constructive message.

There are fly school-teachers, who hector and scold; fly pupils, who find and fasten upon the teacher’s sensitive spot; fly beggars, who will not be put aside; fly reformers, who can only make trouble; fly neighbors, who cannot mind their own business; fly shopkeepers, who will not let you buy what you want.

And the name of the devil himself is Beelzebub; which being interpreted means “Lord of Flies.”

 

Hope

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About twenty-five years ago Dr. Harrison Schmidt traveled from his Albuquerque home to speak to a group in Jefferson City.  I do not recall everything he said although I recall the general topic.  But one sentence from his remarks is vivid in my memory and it is worth thinking about today.

We are living through troubling times, particularly in the last two calendar years, times of uncertainty and fear caused by a pandemic, times of uncertainty in our political system and campaign-induced fears, warranted or not, of our national future followed by the frightful events of January 6 and their lingering impacts on our political mentality.

There are major differences of opinion about the greatness of our nation.  Have we been made greater or has our greatness been dimmed by events of the past half-decade?  Do we dare think, regardless of how we answer that question, that we truly can be great or greater still?

We cannot be either if we wallow in self-pity, if we focus on our unresolved shortcomings as a people, if we accept that we as a people are limited in what we can achieve, what we should achieve, what we must achieve.  We cannot be if we worry more about false differences that divide us—and those who would stoke fears of those differences—than in the common interests we have within our diversity.

And so we come to Dr. Schmidt, world-famous geologist best known for finding one rock and finding some orange soil.  The rock is known as Troctolite 76535.  The soil is a mix of orange and black volcanic glass formed in a process we known as a “fire explosion.”

One rock and some dirt.

From the Moon.

Harrison Schmidt was the last person (for the last 48 years and counting) to set foot on the Moon.  The rock has been called by NASA “without a doubt the most interesting sample returned from the Moon!”  Note the exclamation point. Mission objectives do not often feature them.  Troctolite 76535 is at least 4.2 Billion years old and is significant beyond its age. It shows that the Moon once had a magnetic field “generated by a dynamo at its core” as our Earth has.

And the dirt shows that the Moon once was volcanically active, explosively so.

Dr. Schmitt, who reached 86 in July, is one of the four Moonwalkers still alive (Buzz Aldrin turned 91 on January 20; Dave Scott turned 88 in June and Charlie Duke will hit 86 in October).  Schmitt was 37 when I watched from the press site at Cape Kennedy as he, Gene Cernan, and Ronald Evans thundered into the night sky in December, 1972.

More than two decades later, when he talked in Jefferson City about space, his mission, the discoveries made in the Apollo program and the opportunities that waited for a nation unafraid to reach for the stars, he reminded us:

“Apollo is often forgotten as having been a program where 20-year old men and women were managed by a few 30-year olds, none of whom believed anything was impossible.”

Think of that last clause: “None of whom believed anything was impossible.”

That’s the path to national greatness.  It’s not just for 20 and 30-year olds.

Whether it’s finding rocks on the Moon, finding a vaccine against a worldwide plague within months or even finding middle political ground, we know that nothing is impossible.  But we have to look beyond ourselves. We have to look up for hope rather than down on others.

This entry can be dismissed as saccharine babble. And it might be by those to whom tomorrow is to be feared and to whom uncertainty precludes discovery. But they will not seek exclamation points in life and might limit opportunities for others to find them.

Greatness is not created by cultivating fear and uncertainty personally or on a broader stage.

Greatness is achieved by those who go beyond those issues, none of whom believe anything is impossible. Political leaders might say it.  But it is you and I who must live it and lift up others to join us.

It’s time for more exclamation points!

Curbing enthusiasm at Indianapolis

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(INDYCAR/NASCAR)—A good start, a couple of dream endings, and a closing controversy for the tripleheader at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway last weekend.

An INDYCAR race on the track’s 14-turn, 2.439-mile road course, immediately followed by a race by NASCAR’s second-tier drivers (the Xfinity series) and then less than 24 hours later, another race on the same circuit by NASCAR’s Cup competitors.

Will Power picked up his first win of the season, holding off the field in two late-race re-starts to finish 1.1 seconds ahead of Romain Grosjean, who was the runnerup in the May race on the Indianapolis road course. Power’s victory was the 40th of his career, putting him in a tie for fifth-most INDYCAR wins. Thirty-eight of those wins have come for Team Penske.

The competition was intense throughout the race with 269 on-track passes (changes of position during pit stops not counted), 190 of them for position.  The 269 on-track passes set a new record for the road course and the 190 passes for position tied a record set on the IMS road course three years ago.

Points leader Alex Palou, who started sixth, had a disastrous end of his day with an engine failure than left him 27th in the 28-car field.  Pole-sitter Pato O’Ward led the first 15 laps and finished fifth.  Scott Dixon, who went into the race third in points struggled from a poor starting position and could do no better than 17th.

Nonetheless, Palou’s lead over O’Ward and Dixon has shrunk to just 21 over O’Ward and 34 over Dixon with four races left in the schedule.

INDYCAR runs its last race on an oval next Saturday, the last chance Midwesterners will have to see the cars and drivers this year.  The evening race at Gateway Motorsports Park across the river from St. Louis precedes two weeks off before INDYCAR wraps up its season with three races on the west coast.

INDYCAR President Jay Frye told your correspondent Monday morning that the tight schedule between the open-wheel race and the Xfinity race gave the Speedway little time to clear all the INDYCAR gear out of the pits and to get the Xfinity pit boxes installed.  The goal was thirty minutes, he said. It took 33.  Frye says the track will work on eliminating that three-minute delay.

Speedway and INDYCAR series owner Roger Penske wound up with a two-fer for the day when Austin Cindric drove a Penske car to victory in the 150-mile race on the road course. Cindric is the son of the President of Team Penske. It’s his fifth win of the year, 13th of his career. But this win was at Indianapolis, an event he called, “amazing,” continuing, “I can’t even put into words what this means.”

Pole-sitter A. J. Almendinger was second for the second straight road-course race.  But his Cinderella moment would come a day later.

The Sunday Cup race was the first Indianapolis road course race for the Cup cars and it came within six laps of being hotly-contested leading up to a breakthrough win for one of NASCAR’s top drivers who is still grasping for his first win of the year.

Eleven drivers led at least one lap with Kyle Larson and Denny Hamlin combining for 55 of the scheduled 82 laps.  But six laps from the end, a disintegrating trackside curb led to crashes, caution flags and two red-flag race stoppages that consumed an hour and 24 minutes in all.  Hamlin took the lead from Larson with seven laps left and held him off through two re-starts before being spun out of the competition by Chase Briscoe.

A. J. Almendinger was the beneficiary of the crashes and carnage, avoiding all the trouble to hold off Ryan Blaney for the 94th and 95th laps.

The crashes triggered by the deteriorating curb in turn number six drew quick criticism from some drivers, although the same curbs had survived the Xfinity race last year, the INDYCAR races, and Saturday’s Xfinity race, as well as practice and qualification laps.  The troublesome curb was finally removed from the course for the last few laps.

NASCAR’s competition vice-president Scott Miller said after the race that the curbing had been installed at the request of several drivers before last year’s Xfiniity race “because that section (of the track) was way too fast.”

Miller said the curbing was the same style of curbing that has been used since the road-course was re-arranged seven years ago.  “We looked at that curb between every session; we looked at it at night and in the morning and there was no indication…that there was really anything wrong with that curbing.”  He called the delamination of it “a little bit of a surprise for us.”

Almendinger is a full-time Xfinity driver for Kaulig Racing, which fields a Cup car for a limited number of races. His win came in his fourth Cup race of the year.  It does not qualify him for one of the sixteen playoff spots for the championship because he’s not a full-time driver in NASCAR’s premier series. The win is the first Cup win for Kaulig.

The win at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was particularly emotional for Almendinger, who drove for Penske in the 2013 Indianapolis 500.

He had the lead with seventy laps left when a seatbelt clasp came loose and he had to make a pit stop to get it fixed. He finished seventh, about four seconds behind Tony Kanaan, who set a speed record for the 500 that stood until this year..

Hamlin, who won seven times last year, remains winless this year. He wound up 23rd in the race but has enough points to be in the playoffs. However, his end-of-race disaster coupled with Kyle Larson’s third-place finish leaves Hamlin 22 points behind Larson for the regular season points championship and the bonus playoff points that go with it.

NASCAR has two races left before the 16-driver shootout field is set.

(Photo Credits: Rick Gevers, Bob Priddy)

 

 

The simple folk

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(“What do the simple folk do?” is a song from the 1960s Broadway musical hit Camelot.” Guinevere and King Arthur discuss the lives of commoners and what they do “when they’re blue.” Guinevere notes, “They obviously outshine us at turning tears to mirth, and tricks a royal highness is minus from birth.”  Arthur’s final conclusion, after listing several things the simple folk do is, “They sit around and wonder what royal folk would do.”

Dr. Frank Crane suggests those not burdened with noblesse oblige do quite well—because it doesn’t occur to them that they should be living—-)

A MISERABLE LIFE

Poverty is a point of view.

It all depends upon what you are used to, and upon what you see others enjoying

The average realistic author who seeks to harrow the reader ‘ s feelings with his account of the wretchedness of existence is simply performing the trick of bringing a man with one set of tastes into the life of a man with another set of tastes .

The king deceives himself if he thinks the cobbler unhappy, for the   cobbler has never been king.

The poet is mistaken when he imagines the life of a rough teamster to be miserable, for the teamster is a teamster and not a poet.

Leaving actual pain out of account, most lives are reasonably content  so long as they are what they are and do not view themselves from the point of what they are not .

Much of the description of the hollowness and emptiness of existence  we find in George Gissing or Upton Sinclair and their ilk might be thus parodied:

“Little do we suspect the sorrows of the poor. The days crept on with leaden feet for   Archibald Vandergold. There was no golf nor lawn tennis. Only the full routine of behaving himself and earning a living.

“In his little flat there was only one servant and she was absent  Thursdays.

“There were no mistresses nor chorus girls to eat lobster and drink  Veuve Cliquot with him at 1 a. m. No, only one wife and a child.

“He had to reach for the bread at table himself, and pass his own plate when he wanted another piece of ham. No butler stood behind his chair and whisked away his plate every time he took another spoonful of beans. Like all the dreary bourgeois to whose class he belonged, he did his own buttling.

“To arise in the morning and select your own collar, tie your own tie, and stoop over to put on your own shoes until the temples throb with the constrained attitude, to have no valet to turn on the hot water for your bath, but to be compelled to handle the faucet yourself; to go out to the dining room and drink your coffee instead of having James bring it to you as you lie abed; to ride downtown on a tramway instead of taking a morning gallop upon your thoroughbred; to have no polo ponies, no private yacht, not even to belong to a club; to have no box at the opera where you can wear your dress suit and loll about and converse with duchesses and millionaires’ daughters in Robert W. Chambers’s* dialogues; such is the life of that submerged class which the reader of the average magazine society yarn hates to think about.

“Little do we suspect the sorrows of the poor. Archibald Vandergold felt his humiliation. His bathtub was not of porphyry. His cigarette case was not gold with his monogram on it; it was leather and carried the advertisement of a coal dealer.

“He actually went to church Sundays with his wife and child and not to a gilt restaurant with another man’s wife.

“The darkness of his narrow existence can be imagined when it is added that he actually liked his wife, liked to go to church, enjoyed being decent, and was interested in his business.

“And, pardon my vulgarity in saying it, but the whole fetid truth must be told—the poor wretch did not own an automobile!”

*American science fiction and historical fiction writer 1865-1933)

I’m sorry, but—–

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This is going to sound cruel.

Awful.

I’m going to say it anyway—because what others are saying by their actions or inactions is just as bad or worse.

I almost lost a friend to the Delta Variant a few weeks ago.

She’s making a slow recovery, finally off the ventilator that saved her life.

She is a vaccine-denier.

I’m glad she didn’t die.  I’m glad she’s getting well.  I’m glad none of her immediate friends or family have been stricken as badly as she was.

But I’m not sorry she got sick.

No, that’s not quite right.  I am sorry she got sick.

But she asked for it.

She gambled that she could go without vaccination and not get hit by the virus.

She lost.

She lost a lot, although fortunately she did not lose it all.

She had the usual excuses—no full FDA approval; it’s only for emergency use; fear of side-effects; stories of people who got sick anyway; the need for more research first; don’t want to be a guinea pig; it will affect my DNA; I’m healthy and my immune system works just fine, etc.

The CDC says that, as of August 2, more than 164 million people have been fully inoculated. That means that every day, 164-million Americans have been willing guinea pigs and are proof these vaccines work.  That should carry some weight. A lot of weight, in fact but some people are so fixated on the inflated anti-vax rhetoric that won’t believe this reality.

The CDC says less than 0.01% of vaccinated people develop breakthrough infections that produce serious complications or death. Deaf ears listen to such figures.

DNA is not affected.  This virus doesn’t attack the cell nucleus and that’s where DNA resides.

I suppose it is as hard for me to understand why somebody decides to roll the dice on their health instead of getting a shot or two that is proven effective as it is for anti-vaxers to understand why they shouldn’t get shots.

I bet I’m not the only person who is troubled by what we should feel under these circumstances.

Conversations with medical personnel have not been uncommon for me lately, and I’m hearing irritation, frustration, anger and resentment in their voices because they have worked themselves to the bone for the last year and a half, have watched people decline and die before there was a vaccine and now they’re inundated by people who don’t need to be sick or dying who are demanding medical care. And the medical profession is duty-bound to provide it.

It is hard not to look at people such as my friend and think, “Well, you got what you deserved.”  Or to want to ask, “If you worry about the side-effects of getting a shot, why don’t you worry about the possible side effect of NOT getting a shot?  Is death not a side effect that should motivate you?”

I’d much rather attend a funeral WITH somebody who has a sore arm than attend a funeral FOR somebody who died without one. I came close to attending such a funeral a few weeks ago. So did my friend, although she would have been beyond knowing whose funeral it was.

There is a certain guilt that comes with being callous enough to say that those who refuse to protect themselves get what they deserve.  Nobody deserves to get sick with this thing.  Nobody deserves to die.

But I can’t bring myself to be particularly sympathetic.

I don’t want to go to someone’s funeral angry that they are dead. I’d rather go to a funeral being sad.  But I’m afraid anger would be the predominant emotion.

So a few questions for the people who don’t want to get shots:

Why should I send you a get-well card? How should I feel if you gamble and get very sick?  How should I feel if you gamble and you lose everything?

How should I mourn friends who threw away their lives because irrational politics overrode rational thoughts of self-preservation?

What should I say to the grieving spouse you leave behind? The comment, “Well, at least they died doing what they loved to do” becomes even more ludicrous when what they loved to do was LIVE!

I probably won’t go to your funeral at all. It’s your fault that I have to make that choice. I don’t want to be your pallbearer.

It’s awful to feel these conflicting emotions.

It’s cruel.

I’m sorry, but—–

Racing: Coming from Behind

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(INDYCAR)—Most of us hardly notice many of the bumps in the road we travel over, but if you’re in an INDYCAR, they get your attention.  They did last weekend as INDYCAR ran its first-ever race on the streets of Nashville.  The race included two crossings of the Korean Veterans Memorial Bridge per lap that, with the bumps elsewhere, tested drivers’ skills.

The win went to Marcus Ericsson, whose car (hitting a bump) went airborne on the fifth lap when he rear-ended Sebastian Bourdais on the fifth lap.  The suspension held together when the car landed but Ericsson had to hit the pits to replace a broken front wing.  The incident set him farther back because he had to serve a stop-and-go penalty for avoidable contact.

The collision was even more costly to Bourdais, who could not continue. He finished 27th, last in the largest field in at least eight years for an INDYCAR race that wasn’t the Indianapolis 500.

Ericsson worked his way back up during the last twenty laps to challenge leader Colton Herta. Herta went into the tire barrier after coming off the bridge, leaving Ericsson to fend off a charge by Scott Dixon as the laps wore down.  He finished  about 1.6-seconds ahead of Dixon in a two-lap shootout after a red flag stopped the race because of a multi-car crash that clogged the track.

It’s Ericsson’s second win of the season. Dixon’s second-place finish moved him past Pato O’Ward into second place in the points although he lost ground to leader Alex Palou.

INDYCAR stays on a road course next weekend when it returns to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for a Saturday race, part of a triple-header weekend that also will feature NASCAR’s Infiniti and Cup series races.

(NASCAR)—Kyle Larson withstood a furious charge by teammate Chase Elliott at Watkins Glen to pick up his fifth win of the year and tie Denny Hamlin for the Cup points lead with three races left before the season re-starts with a ten-race playoff.

It’s Larson’s fifth win of the year. He also has five runnerup finishes in the first 23 races of the year.  Hamlin, who ran off a lengthy string of top-five finishes at the start of the year, has yet to win a race.

Larson finished 2.4 seconds ahead of Elliott, who was dropped with Christopher Bell to the last starting positions because their cars flunked pre-race inspections. Bell rallied to seventh. Both Larson and Elliott had to deal with lapped traffic as the race wound down. Elliott said he made too many mistakes too late in the race to win.

With only three races left, thirteen drivers are locked into the playoffs with wins. Hamlin and Kevin Harvick, also surprisingly winless this year, are in on points, leaving only one slot open.  Tyler Reddick has the edge over Austin Dillon for the sixteenth playoff position.

NASCAR races on the Indianapolis Speedway road course for the first time ever on Sunday afternoon for the Brickyard 200.  The race replaces the Brickyard 400, which has been run on the oval since its inception in 1995. Several drivers aren’t happy about the change including two-time Cup Champion Kyle Busch. “I don’t view this track as Indianapolis,” he says, “Indianapolis is the oval. That’s where the allure of Indianapolis comes from.”

Three-time BY400 winner Kevin Harvick refers to the road course race as “a tough pill to swallow.”

The switch to the road course comes after years of declining attendance at the 400-mile race on the oval.

(FORMULA 1)—It’s summer break time for F1—no race until August 29 when the series runs the GP of Belgium.

(Photo credit: Joe Skibinski, INDYCAR; Jim Coleman)