Monthly Archives: September 2021

Notes from a Quiet Street (Fall Colors edition)

Posted on by
Reply

(Being a compendium of random thoughts that don’t merit full bloggiation.)

Would someone, preferably one of the people Missourians have sent to the U. S. Senate or the U.S. House, enlighten us about why we have a federal debt limit if it can be increased at congressional will?

And, members of our Washington delegation, don’t get all puffy about how you oppose raising it when you and your colleagues previous DID raise it.

Please write a 500-word theme about how you will pay back this debt. If you expect to pass this course, do not give me the tiresome argument that if government reduces its ability to pay for its programs, the public will create more economic growth that will reduce the debt.

There will be no grading on the curve. This is strictly pass/fail.

-0-

When it was announced a few days ago that the nation was averaging 1900 COVID deaths a day for the first time since last March and that 90% of COVID patients in hospitals are unvaccinated, an ugly stroke of capitalist brilliance overwhelmed me.

Monogrammed body bags.  There’s a big constituency for this product—the thousands of people who refuse to get vaccinated.  Take your personal bag to the hospital with you so you can go out in style.

It would be the last status statement, a last chance to be SOMEBODY instead of just some body.

It will be a wonderful memento for your survivors and an inspirational symbol of your stalwart independence.  Could become a family heirloom.

And there would be a good market for used ones.  Run an ad on the internet, or maybe in the newspaper, or offer it on EBay: “Body bag, reasonably priced. Great savings if your initials are _____ (fill in appropriate letters).”

If ya don’t got it, flaunt it.

0-0-0

The University of Missouri football team, a few days ago, held a charitable event for the athletic department of Southeast Missouri State University. The Tigers gave the Red Hawks $550,000 and all the team from Cape Girardeau had to do was get the snot beaten out of it again at Faurot Field.

Early in the season we see a lot of these games, usually routs.  We’re not sure they should really count on the season’s record of either team but they do—-because they are two college football teams and they do play and somebody keeps score.

Smaller schools are willing to take on these challenges because—in this case $550,000—they get a relative ton of money for athletic programs that come nowhere near having the resources bigger schools have.  If being a punching bag one Saturday afternoon makes sure there are volleyball and soccer and other minor games available for student-athletes in Cape Girardeau, the price is worth it.

0-0-0

We are sure we are not the only ones to think, or to say when buying a new car, “This is probably the last gas-powered car I’ll ever own.” We’ve said it for the last two cars we’ve bought and the second one is coming up on eight years old. Will there be a third?  Two developments in the past few days make it clear the future is silently roaring (if such thing is possible) our way.

New York’s new governor, Kathy Hochul, has signed a new law saying every new passenger car or truck sold in the state must be zero-emission vehicles by 2035.   Medium and heavy-duty trucks have a 2045 goal. This is a huge goal—electric vehicles constituted only two percent of sales last year. The new law is similar to an executive order issued by the governor of California earlier.  Big difference: executive orders are not laws.

That’s plenty of time to develop EVS that don’t need to recharged on round trips to St. Louis or Kansas City.

In fact, one such car is coming over the horizon.

We’ve said that we’ll start to seriously look at an electric vehicle has a 500-mile battery.  There is such a vehicle and the EPA says its range is 520 miles, topping Tesla’s best by more than 100 miles.  The company is called Lucid and it plans to start deliveries of its cars before the end of the year. Lucid is a Silicon Valley-founded company that recently picked Casa Grande, Arizona as the site for its first purpose-built EV factory in North America. It will start by making 10,000 cars a year and plans expansion to produce more than 300,000 a year.

Prices are believed to start at about $77,000. They’re going to have to come down a few tens to be affordable to people such as I am.

Still…….

The future is coming.

0-0-0

The big inaugural/bicentennial parade in Jefferson City on Saturday, September 18t, was a week premature.   True, Missouri was admitted to the Union on August 10, 1821.  But people living out here in central Missouri didn’t know about it until September 25 when the proclamation was published by The Missouri intelligencer¸ in Franklin—Missouri’s first newspaper outside of St. Louis.   Folks in St. Louis celebrated twenty days earlier when Missouri’s first newspaper, The Missouri Gazette and Public Advertiser, published the proclamation.  No big stories or headlines Just the proclamation.  That’s the primitive reporting style of the day.

 

Racing: Palou’s first, Hamlin’s second, Hamilton’s hundredth

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor.

Two landmark achievements in big-time car racing during the weekend and one big step forward.

(INDYCAR)—Chip Ganassi Racing, which is shutting down its NASCAR operation at the end of the year after 22 years without a championship, has racked up its 14th INDYCAR championship with a driver in only his second year in the series.

24-year old Alex Palou (he pronounced it pal-LOE) is the first Spanish driver to win a championship in the history of American open-wheel racing. He did it in only his second year in the series, posting three wins and finishes in the top three positions in half of the series’ sixteen 2021 races.  He was leading the Indianapolis 500 with one lap left when he was passed by Helio Castroneves and trailed Castroneves across the finish line by less than one-half second.

Palou had served notice in the first INDYCAR race of the year when he won the season opener at Barber Motorsports Park. He picked up other wins at Elkhart Lake and at Portland.  All he had to do in the final race at Long Beach was stay out of trouble.  He finished fourth behind race-winner Colton Herta (who closed out the year with two straight victories), Josef Newgarden, and defending champion and teammate Scott Dixon.

His closest competitor going into the final race, Pato O’Ward, dropped out with a broken drive shaft and finished next to last. O’Ward was trying to become the first Mexican INDYCAR champion.

Palou, O’Ward, and Herta lead a vanguard of young drivers likely to dominate INDYCAR for the next decade or more.  O’Ward is 22 and Herta, a three-time winner this year, is 21.

(NASCAR)—Denny Hamlin, winless in the first 26 races this year, already has won twice in the first four races of the 10-race championship runoff.  His win at Las Vegas locks him into the round of eight that will go on for the title after two more races.

Victory is a relief for Hamlin, who said afterward, “I’m so happy to not have to worry about the next two weeks.”  Next weekend’s race is at Talladega, where high-speed drafting and anticipated major crashes are considered inevitable, making unpredictability one of the hallmarks of the race.  The last race in this playoff segment will be on the Charlotte road course.

Hamlin dominated the race at Las Vegas, leading more than half of the laps including the last 39. He withstood a charge by last year’s NASCAR champion, Chase Elliott, beating him to the line by about four-tenths of a second. Kyle Busch, Martin Truex Jr., and Ryan Blaney competed the top five.

Four of the present twelve title contenders will be eliminated from the chase after Talladega and Charlotte. On the outside looking in after Las Vegas are William Byron, Kevin Harvick, Alex Bowman and Christopher Bell.

(FORMULA 1)—Lewis Hamilton has become the first driver in Formula 1 history to win 100 grand prix races.  His win puts him back atop the leader board in the points standings by two points over Max Verstappen.  Hamilton finished almost a minute ahead of Vertappen, his closest challenger in his effort to win a record eighth championship. The two will fight for the title in the remaining seven races.

Sir Lewis Hamilton, it is, broke Michael Schumacher’s once-untouchable record of 91 F1 victories last year.  The superiority of the two drivers is reflected in the fact that Ayrton Senna is third on the win list with “only” 51.  Hamilton has run 281 F1 races, winning 100 and finishing in the top three 176 times.

(Photo credits:  Bob Priddy and Formula 1)

 

 

Sedimental Value

Posted on by
1

(My mother-in-law, Yuba Hanson, used to refer to things that we didn’t need to keep, but did keep, as items of “sedimental value,” things that just accumulate, like sediment in a corner.  As one advances in years, the word “downsizing” grows in importance. And that provokes thoughts of why and how we accumulated so much stuff to begin with. Dr. Frank Crane thought about that, too, and wrote about—–)

THINGS

Miss Mathilda Tommet of Milwaukee left a will the other day eight and one-half feet long, written in her own hand on sheets of paper pasted together. In it she bequeathed to one relative “my best bedspread and one-half of my best towels;” to another a high-backed-chair, admonishing her executors to “be sure to take the one standing on the north side of the sideboard;” to another her chickens and feed; while vegetables, fruit, pickles, a pail of lard, and “father’s old clock” go to another, and to her dearest enemy a pair of old shoestrings.

Then there was Thoreau, who in his house by Walden Pond would have no furniture; he found a stone once which he fancied, and kept awhile, but soon threw it away, as    he found it had to be dusted.

One of the greatest tyrannies of life is THINGS.

The most common form of insanity is the mania to Own.

One of the first acts of a person who comes into money is to load himself down with a pile of rubbish that makes his life a fret and his death bed terrible.

The very rich collect. They get together spoons, canes, pictures, vases, pitchers, books, or marbles.  When there is no more room for them in the house they build a wing and pack it full.

I knew a man who had $ 20,000 worth of old postage stamps locked up in a safety deposit vault.

I knew an old woman who never traveled, although she longed to travel and had plenty of means, because she was afraid her parlor carpet and her blue china dishes would not properly be taken care of.

The stores are heaped up with THINGS. The most skillful men are employed to persuade people to buy THINGS for which they have no earthly use.

Every home contains sets of books that were bought at a high rate, and that have stood for years without a soul looking into them.

American living rooms are as cluttered as Westminster Abbey. Every  mantel is loaded with junk. The walls are covered with pictures, most of them bad. The floors are so thick with chairs and superfluous stands and tables that few can wind their way through them by day and none by night.

Things, things, things! Bedrooms are full of them, closets heaped with  them, the attic is choked with them, the woodshed and barn are running over.

When we go away on vacations we take trunks full of things. When we go to Europe also we find that baggage is the plague of our life.

It is a relief to turn to the books of the Hindus and read :

“Even if they have longer remained with us, the objects of sense are  sure to vanish. Why, then, not forsake them ourselves? If they pass away by themselves they cause  the greatest pain to the mind, but if we forsake them ourselves they cause endless happiness and peace.”

And in another Oriental book we find this searching word:

“For a man ‘ s life consisteth not in the abundance of THINGS which he possesseth.”

 

Why didn’t you go with them? 

Posted on by
Reply

You promised you would.  Remember you said during  your pep rally, “We’re going to walk down—and I’ll be there with you—We’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down.  Anyone you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women….’

You said “we” five times, and you promised to “be there with you.”

But you didn’t go, did you?   You just turned them loose then and you strolled back to the warmth of the big white house.

Sure was a funny way to lead.

Kind of like Jimmy Doolittle.  Remember how he watched fifteen B-25s take off from the security of the bridge of the Hornet?

And we’re all familiar with General Patton, commanding the Third Army from his bunker in London as his soldiers swept across France and into Germany.

George Washington, relaxing by the fireside at Mount Vernon, received regular reports on the fine living conditions at Valley Forge.

The examples are so numerous—-

Some of us are old enough to remember Martin Luther King telling his marchers who had traveled with him from Selma to Montgomery Alabama, “The battle is in our hands. And we can answer with creative nonviolence the call to higher ground to which the new directions of our struggle summons us. The road ahead is not altogether a smooth one. There are no broad highways that lead us easily and inevitably to quick solutions. But we must keep going.”  And I’m sure you remember that Dr. King, after speaking words somewhat more eloquent than yours, got into his long black Cadillac and drove back to Selma where he waited for reports of what happened in Montgomery.

Actually, the leaders in these and other situations never said, “I’ll be with you.”  But they were.  They were with those they commanded.

What might have happened if you had been a man of your word that day?  Could you have spoken to the crowd of “peaceful tourists” and urged them not to break windows, break down doors, assault security officers, vandalize offices, and force members of the House and the Senate to flee for their lives?

Would you have tolerated a noose and a sign that said, “Hang Mike Pence,” or would you have encouraged more respect for a man carrying out the constitutional duties of the Electoral College?

Could your calming presence have saved the life of Ashli Babbit?

Could you have prevented the arrests of more than 600 “tourists,” many of whom face significant time in prison or in jail while their families wonder what’s to happen to them if you had said as the crowd surged toward the doors and windows, “Wait!  We’re just here to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women.  Go back out behind the fence and demonstrate out there.”

Oh, if only you had kept your promise.

“I’ll be there with you,” you said.

You’re no Jimmy Doolittle. Or George S. Patton.  Or Martin Luther King.

Or any number of other great leaders who led from the front instead of retreating inside their  nice, warm, safe quarters where they could do as you did(according to some accounts),  joyfully watch what you unleashed.

You expressed some concern a few days ago that the September 18h celebration of the January 6 insurrection was intended to make you look bad. What looked bad was the small number of people who gathered to celebrate the day,

Too bad you weren’t with them, either. Be comforted by the fact that you could not have looked worse on September 18th than you did on January 6.

But, once again, you weren’t in the front ranks. Others took all the risks and you watched it all on television. Again.

Once again you’re the man who wasn’t there.

Yesterday, upon the stair,

I met a man who wasn’t there.

He wasn’t there again today.

Oh, how I wish he’d go away.

—or maybe, walk away.  You’re good at that.

Racing: Then there were 12, and 3

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing editor

Cutdown weekend winnows the field in both NASCAR and INDYCAR as the seasons head toward their final laps.

(NASCAR)—Kyle Larson won a wild last race of the first playoff round for the NASCAR Cup championship and will lead twelve drivers into the second round.  Four drivers have fallen by the wayside and cannot finish higher than 13th this year regardless of how they run the next seven races.

The long race at one of NASCAR’s shortest tracks is known for generating short tempers, and the crowd saw them on display in the pits after the race when Kevin Harvick (still in his helmet) and Chase Elliott got into an angry discussion of Elliott’s maneuver that Harvick claimed cost him the race.

Harvick, winless this year, challenged Elliott for the lead with 35 laps to go. Contact between the two cars left Elliott with a cut tire.  He lost three laps during a pit stop and came out right behind Harvick, Elliott’s better grip helped him get past Harvick and stay ahead of him by running Harvick’s line while Larson closed, and passed Harvick for the lead with three laps left and beat him to the finish by about two-tenths of a second.

The victory is Larson’s sixth of the year, the most of any driver. Elliott wound up 25th.

Harvick and Elliott had heated words as soon as their cars stopped in the pits. NASCAR officials got between them before things went beyond verbal.  Harvick called Elliott’s blocking move “a temper tantrum” and a “chicken (expletive) move.”  He said he told Elliott he wanted to “rip his freaking head off.”  Elliott said Harvick’s bump of him in passing for the lead is “something he does all the time.  He runs into your left side constantly at other tracks….Did it to me in Darlington a few weeks ago because he was racing me…I don’t care who he is or how long he’s been doing it, I’m going to stand up for myself and my team and we’re going down the road.”

Bristol was the final race in the first three-race round of the playoffs. Both Elliott and Harvick will be in the second round.  But Aric Almirola, Tyler Reddick, Kurt Busch, and Michael McDowell have been eliminated. Reddick was 12th in the race; Almirola 18th,Busch 19th,  and McDowell 24th.

Harvick is seeded twelfth for the second three-race elimination round. Larson retains his lead but Martin Truex Jr., takes over the second seed because he has four wins for the year, ahead of Denny Hamlin, with only one.  Ryan Blaney, Kyle Busch, and Elliott fill slots 4-6.  Then it’s Alex Bowman, William Byron, and Joey Logano, with Brad Keselowski, Christopher Bell and Harvick filling out the rest of the bracket.

The major teams in NASCAR dominate the remaining competitors. Four of the twelve drivers are from Hendrick Motorsports. Four are with Joe Gibbs Racing. Three represent Team Penske. Harvick, who drivers for Stewart-Haas, is the only other driver still in the hunt.

Unlike other major sports, dropping out of playoff contention in NASCAR does not mean leaving the weekly competition.  The twelve remaining playoff competitors still have to compete against two dozen other drivers in every race.

The field will be cut to eight after the next three races, then to four after three more, and those four will be the only drivers in a field of about 38 cars in the year’s final race who can compete for the Cup. Whoever has the best finish in the final race, even if not winning, will be the 2021 NASCAR Cup champion.

Harvick and Elliott, who continued their discussion behind closed doors after the race, will be back on track along with all the other drivers next Sunday at Las Vegas.

(INDYCAR)—-Alex Palou’s second place finish at Laguna Seca has expanded his points lead over challenger Pato O’Ward and Josef Newgarden, the only two drivers with any reasonable hopes of catching him in the series’ last race.

Colton Herta dominated from the pole, giving up the lead to Romain Grosjean for four laps of the 72-lap race, and those during pit stops. Palou chased him for the last part of the race but came up almost two seconds short.  It’s Herta’s second win at Laguna Seca, his fifth in his three-year INDYCAR career, one more than his father, Bryan, accumulated in thirteen years on the circuit.  His father, Bryan, is now his race manager.

Palou now leads O’Ward by 35 points and two-time champion Josef Newgarden by 48 heading into next weekend’s finale on the streets of Long Beach.  He will clinch his first championship if he finishes 11th or better.

The contest for INDYCAR Rookie of the year between Grosjean and Scott McLaughlin remains tight with only twenty points separating the two. Grosjean, who started 13th, ran a scintillating last segment of the race, cutting his separation from Herta by a second or more (sometimes two), lap after lap.  He was down ten seconds with nine laps to go but he could get no closer than 3.7-seconds when Herta took the checkered flag.

This will be the sixteenth straight year the INDYCAR championship will be decided at the season’s last race.  INDYCAR does not have a playoff system, as NASCAR does.

(SCHEDULES)—Missourians who like big-time auto racing will have no races in the state next year, as usual, but will have plenty of races within day-trip distance (depending on where they live, of course).  INDYCAR’s 2022 schedule, just announced, has two races at the Indianapolis Speedway in May including the 500, a double-header return to Iowa June 23-24, and at Nashville and Gateway (World Wide Technology Raceway) across the river from St. Louis in August.

NASCAR will run at the Kansas Speedway, across the line from Kansas City, on May 15 and September 11, and will have its first Cup race ever at Gateway on June 5.  Nashville comes up on June 26. The second race on the Indianapolis Speedway Road Course will be July 31.

By the way—-

Before promoters built the Kansas Speedway, an effort was made to gain state support for a major track near Kansas City International Airport, the Missouri legislature thought the idea wasn’t worth state financial incentives and passed.

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 returns for the Grand Prix of Russia at the Sochi circuit next Sunday, the first race since the Monza dustup between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen.  Verstappen has been slapped with a three-place grid penalty for the start of the race.

(Photo credits: NASCAR/Jared C. Tilton-Getty Images,  and Bob Priddy)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why Didn’t I Just say—?

Posted on by
Reply

(It’s the hardest word for many of us to say and we often regret not having the courage to say it.  Failing to say it gets us into all kinds of good and bad situations.  Dr. Frank Crane suggests we think more than we do when we say—-)

NO

No is next to the shortest word in the English language.

It is the concentrated Declaration of Independence of the human soul.

It is the central citadel of character, and can remain impregnable forever.

It is the only path to reformation.

It is the steam-gauge of strength, the barometer of temperament, the electric indicator of moral force.

It is an automatic safety-first device.

It has saved more women than all the knights of chivalry.

It has kept millions or young men from going over the Niagara Falls of drunkenness, profligality, and passion.

It is the updrawn portcullis and barred gate of the castle of self-respect.

It is the dragon that guards beauty’s tower.

It is the high fence that preserves the innocence of the innocent.

It is the thick wall of the home, keeping the father from folly, the mother from indiscretion, the boys from ruin, and the girls from shame.

It is the one word you can always say when you can’t think of anything else.

It is the one answer that needs no explanation.

The mule is the surest footed and most dependable of all domestic animals. No is the mule-power of the soul.

Say it and mean it.

Say it and look your man in the eye.

Say it and don’t hesitate.

A good round No is the most effective of known shells from the human howitzer.

In the great parliament of life the Noes have it.

The value of any Yes you utter is measured by the number of Noes banked behind it.

Live your own life. Make your own resolutions. Mark out your own program. Aim at your own work. Determine your own conduct. And plant all around those an impregnable hedge of Noes, with the jaggedest, sharpest thorns that grow.

The No-man progresses under his own steam. He is not led about and pushed around by officious tugboats.

The woman who can say No carries the very best insurance against the fires, tornadoes, earthquakes, and accidents that threaten womankind.

Be soft and gentle as you please outwardly, but let the centre of your soul be a No, as hard as steel.

Running government as a business, or—-

Posted on by
Reply

It’s an easy suggestion to make: Government should be run like a business. We first heard this piece of oratory so long ago we have forgotten when and we’re sure it wasn’t original then.  So let’s test the validity of that idea. We’ll test it by reversing it. Suppose you ran your business the way Missouri government is run.

The first thing you would do because it would be popular with your customers is cut prices.  Customers like free stuff and if it can’t be free, it should be priced as lowly as possible.  People will like your store a lot because they will pay as little as possible for the merchandise. The best way to keep your prices low is to pay your employees as little as possible. Many won’t stay very long but that’s okay.  There are always more where they came from.

Of course, your merchandise won’t be of the quality of some of your competitors because you’re holding down the prices and you couldn’t afford better merchandise anyway. Your customers won’t complain about the inferiority of the product until it falls apart on them when they need it the most.  And their complaints will be easy to ignore because most of the others are satisfied with inferiority or mediocrity.

You won’t be able to pay for the new roof your store needs.  The parking lot will develop cracks and potholes you can’t afford to fix.  The place might not be as clean because there’s not enough money for a cleaning crew.  A lot of your business equipment is outdated because you can’t afford new stuff that will speed up payment processes or handle orders. You don’t have the money to train employees to use the new equipment anyway.  Your customers won’t mind the inefficiencies as long as you’re cheap enough.

You think about all of this for a while and you realize you’ll make the money you need to fix all of these problems if you just lower your prices some more, which will produce more customers who will in the long run spend more money.  You also can get by with fewer employees. That will help you become more prosperous and shoppers won’t mind if there are fewer people to wait on them or fewer people who can help them find something or order something.

Yep.  That’s the answer.  Keep prices low. Don’t worry about quality. Don’t bother with retaining employees. People will love you because they don’t have to pay much. Of course, they won’t get much.

Run your business the way government is run. Watch government be run the way you run your business.

Prosperity is just around the corner!

Racing— Truex locks in; Palou regains lead; A halo prevents a halo

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet contributing editor

(NASCAR)—Martin Truex Jr., has become the second driver to lock in a position for the second round of NASCAR’s playoffs by Beating last week’s winner, Denny Hamlin, to the finish line at Richmond.  He let a 1-2-3 finish for Joe Gibbs racing.  Christopher Bell was third.

Truex had to come back from a penalty on the race start when he Hamlin, the pole-sitter, to the start line.  NASCAR ordered him to the back of the 37-car field for a restart.  He got to the lead on the 132nd of the race’s 400 laps and led the last fifty.  Hamlin led almost half of the laps but couldn’t catch Truex at the end. Larson, who started the race from the back because of pre-race inspection failures, raced past Truex for his first lead on the 133rd lap but finished sixth.  The finish gave him enough points to make him the third driver assured of a spot in the round of 12 that will go forward for the championship after next Sunday’s night race at Bristol.

(INDYCAR)—Alex Palou came from 16th place early in the Grand Prix of Portland to get his third win of the season and vault him back into the points lead with just two races left in the INDYCAR season.  He finished 1.3 seconds up on alexander Rossi with teammate and defending series champion Scott Dixon getting the last podium slot.

The win vaults Palou past Pato O’Ward, who led early but faded to 14th at the end.  A handful of drivers are still given a chance to win the championship—Palou, O’Ward, two-time champion Josef Newgarden, who is 34 points back. Dixon, in fourth, trails by 49 and Marcus Ericsson has a distant hope from 75 points behind.

A total of 108 points are available in the concluding two INDYCAR races: Laguna Seca next weekend and the finale on the streets of Long Beach on the 26th.

(FORMULA 1)—The world’s major open-wheel racing series have created cockpit safety systems designed to protect drivers from flying debris or in other cars landing on top of other cars.

INDYCAR’s system is enclosed except for the top for driver access.  Formula One has a similar system but it does not include a windshield.  It’s called a “halo” in F1.  And seven-time F1 champion  Lewis Hamilton is convinced he isn’t wearing a halo today because his car had one for the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.

Hamilton and Max Verstappen, who have an intense competition for this year’s championship going, tangled in the first chicane on the race’s 26th lap, with Verstappen trying to pass on the outside. His car rode over the track curb, pitching it onto the top of Hamilton’s car, the right rear wheel of Verstappen’s car rolling over the halo protecting Hamilton. The tire slightly penetrated the top of the halo.

Hamilton said in the paddock after the race that he was reminded of his own mortality and the risks he takes:  “It’s a big shock. It’s only when you experience something like that that you  look at life and realize how fragile we are.” He is convinced the halo saved his life.  There was no sign of concussion but he will see a specialist after complaining that his neck was sore.  “

“Honestly, I feel very fortunate today,” he continued. “Thank God for the halo, that ultimately, I think, saved me, and saved my neck… I don’t think I’ve ever been hit on the head by a car before and it’s quite a shock for me, because I don’t know if you’ve seen the image but my head really is quite far forward. And I’ve been racing a long, long time, so I’m so, so grateful that I’m still here.”

F1 officials consider Verstappen’s actions the main cause of the crash and have announced a three-grid place drop at the next race, and the loss of two standings points. The two drivers have had other incidents this year as they have fought for the top spot in the series.

Neither driver scored any points in the race, leaving Verstappen five points ahead of Hamilton, with eight races left on the schedule.

The winner of the race was McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo, his first victory on the circuit in three years and McLaren’s first GP victory since Jenson Button won at Brazil in 2012. Making the event even sweeter for McLaren was Lando Norris’ second-place finish.  Third went to Valtteri Bottas, Hamilton’s Mercedes teammate.

(Photo credits: Truex: NASCAR/Sean Gardner/Getty Images; Palou and Pagenaud and Rossi at Gateway 2019: Bob Priddy; Verstappen-Hamilton crash: Formula 1)

What we’re made for 

Posted on by
Reply

(Sometimes we have to be reminded of our proper roles and the proper place in our lives for our possessions and our institutions.  Today, Dr. Frank Crane tells us there is a difference between—)

USE AND BEAUTY

The Sabbath, said the teacher, was made for Man, and not Man for the Sabbath.

The bearin’s of which, as Dickens would say, is in its application.

Any Institution was made for Man, and not Man for the Institution.

The college, for instance. No, friend Procrustes, whilst we appreciate your zeal to make a record for yourself as President, yet we would remind you that we are sending our boy to your University for the good he can get out of it, and not for the benefit he can be to it. He is not there for you to find out how far he falls short of your standards, nor what glory he can add to his Alma Mater; He is there for you to find out what’s in him, and to develop that. We don’t care a hang about your grand old traditions and things, except as they help you in being the making of our particular pup.

The Church was made for Man, and not Man for the Church. And if your meeting-house is just occupied in keeping itself up, parson, why, close it up and start a hennery…We don’t care about how much money you raise, nor how beautiful are your vestments, nor how high your theology, nor how numerous your membership, nor how gay your stained glass. Are you helping friend Man? Are you making him sober, industrious, clean, and honest? Are you developing in him a civic conscience? Or are you simply being good—so good you’re good for nothing? Come, produce! Or quit!

The House was made for Man, Ma, and not Man for the House. Let the boys play marbles in the dining-room, and the girls have their beaux in the parlor, and grandpa smoke his pipe in the kitchen, and everybody raid the ice-box at 11 p. m. if they want to; what better use can carpets be put to than that children’s knees should wear them out a-gleemaking, and what are sofas for if not for spooning, and kitchen-warmth and cheer if not for old folk homing? Use the old home up, and get a better product—of love and laughter and undying memories.

Books were made for Man, and not Man for Books. Use ’em. Thumb ’em. Mark ’em. Go to bed with ’em. Carry ’em on trains. And don’t own books that cannot be carried down through the Valley of Every-day as the soul’s lunch-basket.

The most perfect ornament is that which is of the most perfect service to Man. No cane is so beautiful as the one grandfather wore smooth on a thousand walks; no chair so lovely as that one mother consecrated by many a night of rocking the baby; no table so priceless as that one where father used to write; no pipe so pretty as the one he smoked; no dress so charming as that one that still has the wrinkles in it worn there by the little girl gone—gone forever into heaven, or womanhood.

It’s the human touch that beautifies. Nothing can be warmly beautiful that is not, or was not, useful.

And Democracy is beautiful because it exists for the welfare of the People that compose it, and not for the glory of the Dynasty that rules it.

The State was made for Man, and not Man for the State.

The Encounter

Posted on by
Reply

It had the elements of a nightmare.

Blackness

growing larger

in the eyepiece of my camera

rushing toward me

engulfing the sky

darkening it

obliterating it

consuming me

with its noise

its speed

its wind

its blast of heat

roaring past.

Bob Priddy met Big Boy

that day

And lived to tell the tale.

The railroad crossing in Osage City was crowded with onlookers a few days ago, all waiting for the largest steam locomotive ever built anywhere in the world to pass through on its way to a stop in Jefferson City.

Union Pacific locomotive 4014, the only Big Boy still running, rounded the curve in the distance, its mighty steam whistle bellowing in full-throated bass, warning those near the crossing to stand away.  Inconceivable power was coming and coming fast.

And then it blew past, faster than I could turn with it, slightly staggering me with its power, force, and the wind it was pushing outward. And briefly, a ripple of heat reaching out from its boiler to brush my face.

https://youtu.be/QweVLPAyDyY

Later, in Jefferson City, as the locomotive rested briefly at the station, too close to the Capitol bluff to be seen from above, I thought it might be visible from the House of Representatives garage, west of the capitol.  And there it was, lurking and breathing. And when it began to move, slowly, there was a feeling of menace, of a great beast stalking creatures protected by the barred garage windows as it slowly passed by, seconds later to ease onto a siding with the muscular attitude that it was going to go where it damn well pleased to go and it would be best not to challenge it.

https://youtu.be/8zmkZ1Ky2hc

We can be grateful such machines are restricted to tracks and that Transformers are not real.

Walt Whitman, the great American poet, long before Big Boy was even lines drawn on a planning page, felt what I felt when he confronted a locomotive, one of the mechanical marvels of his time:

Thee in thy panoply, thy measur’d dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive,                                                                                           Thy black cylindric body, golden brass, and silvery steel,                   Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides,/ Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar, now tapering in the distance,/ Thy great protruding head-light fix’d in front,     Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple,/              The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack,/Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels,/ Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following,/        Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack,/ yet steadily careering;/ Type of the modern—/emblem of motion and power/—pulse of the continent…/Fierce-throated beauty!/ Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music,/ thy swinging lamps at night,/ Thy madly-whistled laughter,/ echoing, rumbling like an earthquake,/rousing all,/ Law of thyself complete,/ thine own track firmly holding,/(No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,)/Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return’d,/ Launch’d o’er the prairies wide,/ across the lakes,/      To the free skies unpent/ and glad and strong. 

The older generation can dwell for a short time in nostalgia at the appearance of restored steam locomotives. Children often gaze open-mouthed at this great machine, oozing steam and occasional spurts of hot water, as it dozes in front of them. For some, the graceful dance of the slow-moving side rods as the locomotive heads toward its overnight parking place is endlessly fascinating—-as is the pounding rhythm of the same side roads at speed.

The Big Boy and its few smaller kin who still display railroading’s past are far more exciting and, dare we say, romantic than the sanitary and ungainly diesels of today.  But their constant need for care and cleaning, their relatively short runs before needing more water and more fuel, and their mechanical makeup are reasons they are now curiosities, not commonplace.

In 1976, when I rode the American Freedom Train from Boonville to Jefferson City, I asked engineer Doyle McCormack if he thought he missed anything by not living in the age of steam.  “Yeah,” he said, “a lot of work!”

Let us be glad there are still those willing to do that work.  And to bring these great pieces of fierce-throated beauty to us from time to time, glad and strong.                                                -0-