Monthly Archives: October 2022

Giving Up Hope

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Tomorrow is the first of November.  Next weekend is the end of Daylight Savings Time for the year.

We’ve been getting cold leaf-dropping rains.

We call this season “fall” because that‘s what the leaves do.  And moods.

The baseball season will end this week.

The last NASCAR race of the year is coming up  next weekend.

It is always hard to admit—always—-that summer is gone. But when Thanksgiving is only about three weeks away and Christmas is less than 60 days in the future, the reality I have been ignoring wraps its cold arms around me and I must at last abandon hope that I will be warm for about five long, dark months.

Every year, I go around in short-sleeved shirts and feel cold because I am reluctant to admit it’s time to start wearing long-sleeved shirts and jackets.

The lightweight sweatshirt I wear to the YMCA three days a week is enough for now and the cold air against my uncovered legs makes me grateful for heated seats and a heated steering wheel in the car, both of which are operating by the time the car and I get to the stop sign up the street.

Nancy has gotten me some nice wool shirts. They’re hanging next to each other at the end of a rack in my closet.  The polo shirts are still at the front.

Not for long.  My resistance to wool shirts is weakening.  Soon, I will promote the long-sleeves to the front and the short sleeves to the back.  Soon I will remove the shorts (remember when they were called “Bermuda Shorts?” You have to be of a certain age, I think.) from the hook in the closet, and when they’ve been through the washing machine put them in a drawer—-but maybe there will be one more day to wear them. All day.

Nancy was raised in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Yep, I married a “Yooper.”  She likes these crisp, chill days.

Opposites attract, you know.

When people complain of the heat, I tell them, “I waited all winter for days like these.”

In a previous life, I was an indoor cat who always looked for the sun spots.

Baseball is gone. But there’s football and the Tigers have figured out how to win a game or two and the Chiefs are on a roll.  And soon there will be college basketball—a game played by people in shorts.

But then come the fallow days when our basketball team has lost its last (tournament, we hope) game. When the Super Bowl is over.  And all that is left is golf (Leon Wilson’s 1905 book was the first to call it “a good walk spoiled.”) and the NBA and the NHL, both of which—in this house—generate no heat.

The Kansas City Royals and the Texas Rangers play the first game in the Cactus League on February 25 in Surprise, Arizona. The Grapefruit League, in Florida, begins the next day in Jupiter, with the Cardinals against the Washington Nationals.

116 days from today is the first true sign of spring.  The voice of Rooney will be heard in the land once again. And hope will be restored.

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Eric the Meddler

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Our Missouri Attorney General has sued China for not coming clean about COVID. He has meddled in how Pennsylvania ran its 2020 presidential election. He sued more than a dozen school districts that had decided their students were safer if they wore masks to limit COVID exposure. Now he is demanding emails from academics that he thinks are critical of him or might be teaching something he finds it politically advantageous to criticize.

Does this sound like the person whose duties are described on his own office webpage?

The Attorney General serves as the chief legal officer of the State of Missouri as mandated by our Constitution. The Attorney General is elected by Missouri voters, serves a four-year term, and is not subject to constitutional term limits.

The Attorney General’s Office represents and provides legal advice to most state agencies; defends challenges to the validity of state laws; enforces civil law, including consumer protection and environmental laws; defends the State’s interest in civil actions, including bankruptcies, workers’ compensation claims, professional licensing cases, and habeas corpus actions filed by state and federal inmates; and serves as a special prosecutor in criminal cases when appointed. In addition, the Office handles all appeals statewide from felony convictions.

The Attorney General’s Office brings and defends lawsuits on behalf of the State and prepares formal legal opinions requested by State officers, legislators, or county attorneys on issues of law. The Office represents the State in litigation at all levels ranging from a variety of administrative tribunals to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Frankly, it seems our attorney general hasn’t read his own webpage lately, although he seems to be pretty loose in his interpretation of bringing and defending lawsuits on behalf of the State.

A few months ago, Schmitt’s office filed open records requests with the University of Missouri-Columbia. One demanded three years of emails seemed to target a research program to help teachers helping teachers promoting social emotional learning. The Rand Corporation says social emotional learning gives students “the skills they need to work in teams, communicate their ideas, manage their emotions — even stand up to a schoolyard bully. For anyone who has ever complained that kids these days don’t have the strength of character, the stick-to-it-iveness, of previous generations, here’s one way to better ensure they do.”  The second letter demanded four years of emails from a couple of Journalism School professors sent to the head of Politifact, a political fact-checking website.

Why is he interested in these things?  Schmitt’s office has told The Kansas City Star he’s “simply trying to get to the bottom of the fact checking process.”

—whatever the heck that means.

His latest target is Missouri State University Assistant Professor Jon Turner who reacted on Twitter after Schmitt asked parents to report “divisive” curriculum in their kid’s schools.

The Missouri Independent has reported that Turner tweeted that Schmitt used to be known as a moderate state Senator but since becoming AG, he has become “so ANTI-TEACHER I just can’t wrap my mind around the flip-flop” and he said he was working to “make sure this dangerous, hateful political jellyfish never gets elected to anything again.”

Schmitt did not take such remarks lightly.  His office fired off a letter to the university demanding all of Turner’s emails for the previous three months as “part of a fact-finding process we undertook that was looking into the practices and policies of education in our state,” as Schmitt’s spokesman put it.

Turner has told the Independent that his reseach looks at the four-day work week and other challenges facing rural schools, not something Schmitt’s office should bother Schmitt.

Turner says Schmitt’s “attempted intimidation” has just made him more concerned that Schmitt is politicizing his position.

Schmitt also has targeted MSU. Earlier his office demanded emails from various professors and documents related to a training seminar sponsored by the University called the “Facing Racism Institute.”.

The University describes the institute as “the area’s leading program for uncovering racism and understand its impact on individuals and the workplace. It says more than 600 people have attended the institute. The university says, “Racism is still a powerful force in our lives and community. The Institute challenges participants of all backgrounds to be part of an equally powerful dialogue. We provide a safe space and neutral guidance needed to help that dialogue emerge.”

Again, it appears he hasn’t read his own office’s mission statement on its web page although he takes the language about bringing lawsuits on behalf of the state rather freely.

A good friend of your correspondent, who headed the Springfield Chamber of Commerce for many years, called the Institute “the best experience that we have found to have people understand the challenges and perspectives of folks unlike themselves. It is hard to be inclusive if you don’t understand what others might feel like.”

Itt appears that Eric Schmitt is guilty of something we hear his party blasting the Democratic congress and administration for:  government overreach. Whether he has, as Turner says, politicized his office is something we’ll let you decide.

Some of those he has targeted accuse him of trying to intimidate them. Others think he’s involved in political meddling in things that are not part of his official duties (read the intalicized description of the AG’s duties again).

In truth, he’s just being political.

We covered Eric Schmitt when he was a state senator.  We found him to be a thoughtful conservative.  We watched him struggle to pass a major autism bill.  We watched as he tried to transform Lambert-St. Louis Airport into a major trade hub with China—in a time when China’s economy was booming and its geopolitical ambitions had not turned perilous.

We kidded him about his claim that he was the tallest person ever to serve in the Missouri Senate, especially after we found an old newspaper clipping indicating he might only have tied for that distinction.

He’s not that Eric Schmitt today.

Perhaps political ambition is behind it.  Perhaps his advisors have told him he has to behave as he has behaved and is behaving because that appeals to a political base ginned up by and encouraged by Donald Trump—a man who has no compunction about dragging others down to his basest level.

Too bad the old Eric Schmitt isn’t the one running to join Josh Hawley representing Missouri in the U.S Senate. He seems to have left himself behind when he crossed the street from the State Treasurer’s office in the Capitol to the Attorney General’s office in the State Supreme Court building.

A Haunting Baseball Question—and Racing

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(BASEBALL)—A lot of stick-and-ball sports fans adopt the attitude that if their team gets knocked out of the playoffs, they’ll hope the team that did it goes on to the championship.

So some Cardinals fans will be rooting for the Phillies in the World Series that starts Friday.  The Phillies, winners of only 87 games in the regular season, have run the table so far against the Cardinals, Braves and the Padres to gain the right to take on the Houston Astros, who swept the Yankees in the American League finals.   Houston won almost 20 more games in the regular season, 106, than the Phillies did.

But Cardinals fans are left to ponder, “If we had beaten the Phillies, would it be our guys in the World Series?”  The Cardinals were one of eleven teams in major league baseball this year with better records than the Phillies.  But if the Phillies need extra inspiration they need only look at the Cardinals of 2006, who finished 83-78 in the regular season and beat the Detroit Tigers in the World Series. Based on winning percentages, the 2006 Cardinals are the worst teams to win it all.

Five teams with fewer than 90 regular season victories have won the World Series including last year’s Atlanta Braves that finished 88-73, one victory more than the Phillies had this year.

(KC Chiefs)—-Sometimes it seems as if the only way the Kansas City Chiefs can lose is if they beat themselves—last week’s game against the Bills, for example.  For a few minutes against the San Francisco 49ers Sunday, the trend was headed in that direction. The Chiefs spotted the 49ers ten points and then outscored them the rest of the way 44-13 with thirty points in the second half.

The Chiefs have survived a tough first half of the season to go into their break week 5-2.

(TIGERS)—After playing just well enough to lose for a month, the Missouri Tigers played just well enough to win against Vanderbilt.  The Tigers went into the game favored by a couple of touchdowns in some forecasts but needed a fourth-down stop of a Vanderbilt running back to stop a drive that appeared destined for a tying field goal attempt or a winning touchdown.

Missouri is now 3-4 and faces another tough test next weekend against 25th ranked South Carolina.

Now, for the non-stick-and-ball stuff:

(NASCAR)—Unlike other sports where playoff losers go home and pack up the gear until next year, those who lose in NASCAR’s playoffs keep playing.  And winning.

Case in point, Kyle Larson, who won both stages and the race at Homestead-Miami Speedway last weekend.  Larson led all but 68 of the 267 laps. Larson was eliminated from the playoffs earlier as the NASCAR season winds down with only two races left.

Playoff contender Ross Chastain trailed Larson across the line by 1.3 seconds followed by A. J. Almendinger, Austin Dillon, and Brad Keselowski.  Chastain was the only playoff driver in the top five. Keselowski’s finish as his first top five of the year, the first top five since becoming part owner of what is now Roush-Fenway-Keselowski racing.

Joey Logano remains the only driver guaranteed a chance at the championship.  Chastain is the second-seed with Chase Elliott and William Byron holding the top four positions. Denny Hamlin is five points below the cutline. Ryan Blaney is eighteen points back.  Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe need to win next weeks’ race at Martinsville if they are to advance to the final four who will run for the title November 5 at Phoenix.

(INDYCAR)—Two fan favorites have sewn up rides for the 2023 Indianapolis 500.

Sponsorship has been found for a fourth car to be fielded by Andretti Autosport that will give Marco Andretti his eighteenth chance to get his face on the Borg-Warner Trophy.  Andretti was second as a rookie in 2006, sat on the pole in 2020 and has four top-three finishes and eight top tens.

The winner of the 2013 Indianapolis 500, Tony Kanaan, will drive for Arrow McLaren SP team in the 2023 race, which he has said in the past will be his last 500.  He’ll drive the fourth car in the race for AMSP. Kanaan finished third last year for Chip Ganassi Racing. It will be his 22nd 500. He has five top-three finishes including his 2013 win that as the fastest Indianapolis 500 at the time; the record was later broken by Helio Castroneves in 2021.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen has three races left to set a new Formula 1 record for most victories in one year.  He won his thirteenth race last weekend at the Circuit of the Americas, in the United States Grand Prix, near Austin Texas, passing Lewis Hamilton with just six laps left and won by about five seconds.

Hamilton, a seven-time F1 champion, thought he had a shot at his first win of the year and admits he’s beginning to think this will be the first time in his career that he has gone without a victory all year. He’s been racing in F1 since 2007.

The win also locks up the constructors’ championship for Red Bull Racing. It comes the day after the death of the co-founder of the Red Bull energy drink, Dietrich Mateschitz.

Awful

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A few days ago, your faithful scribe heard someone say something terrible about the future of our democracy.  All of us should be threatened by her comment.

It was when Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker had his foot in his mouth for several says on abortion and other, issues.  Conservative radio talker Dana Loesch said, “I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate.”

In other words, the character of someone seeking public office is not important.  The candidate is seen only as a number in a game where power is the only issue.

Have we become so craven as citizens, as voters, that we don’t really care what kind of person we are putting in a position of authority over us that we will vote for someone whose only qualification seems to be that they will do whatever they are told to do regardless of what that action might mean to their constituents and to their country?

If the only thing that matters about a candidate is whether there is an R or a D after their name, we are selling ourselves out. We are putting our trust in people who owe US nothing but who will owe their handlers everything.  And in today’s political climate, too many political handlers care nothing about service to anybody but themselves.

The key word in Loesch’s assertion is “control.”   She and her ilk want to “control” you and me, not to serve us, not to look out for the best interests of the broad and diverse people of our country.

Be very afraid that the Loesch’s of this country will succeed.

Do not sell out yourself when you vote.

He’s Willing to Talk.  Maybe.

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But that doesn’t mean he will suddenly be stricken by a desire to tell the truth.

The January 6 Committee has issued a subpoena for Donald Trump to testify about his effort to stay in office, the opinion of the voters otherwise notwithstanding.

Shortly after the committee’s vote last Thursday, he asked on Truth Social, “Why didn’t the Unselect Committee ask me to testify months ago?”

Of course he had an answer to his own question: “Because the Committee is a total ‘BUST’ that has only served to further divide our Country which, by the way, is doing very badly – A laughing stock all over the World?”

He has indicated that he’ll testify but only if it can be in a public session.

Actually, Trump has been testifying in public for months.  His campaign rallies, ostensibly held to build support for candidates he favors, spend little time uplifting the candidates.  He spends the largest amount of time playing the victim of a gigantic plot against his poor, abused self.

—Which is what he would try to do if the session with the committee were held in public.  It’s pretty easy to contemplate what would happen.  He expressed his attitude in a fourteen-page rambling response to the subpoena vote hours after it was taken. It began:

“This memo is being written to express our anger, disappointment, and complaint that with all of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on what many consider to be a Charade and Witch Hunt, and despite strong and powerful requests, you have not spent even a short moment on examining the massive Election Fraud that took place during the 2020 Presidential Election, and have targeted only those who were, as concerned American Citizens, protesting the Fraud itself,”

If the committee is a witch hunt, it pretty clearly has identified who is the keeper of the broom.  And if these citizens were only “concerned,” what would they have been like if they’d been upset?

Trump still thinks he’s in control of things.

He’s not.

He’s not in control of proceedings against him in New York.

He’s not in control of proceedings against him in Georgia.

He will not dictate conditions to the January 6 Committee.  He either testifies under its procedures or he faces a possible contempt of Congress charge, a criminal charge that carries a punishment of one to twelve months in jail and a fine of $100 to $100,000.

His greatest problem is, and has been, that in any formal investigation whether it is before a grand jury or will be before this committee he will have to take an oath to tell the truth.  And truth, despite the name of his internet platform, has been a stranger to him.

As Trump sulked out of office on January 20, 2021, the Washington Post’s fact checker column tallied up its work for his four years in office:

When The Washington Post Fact Checker team first started cataloguing President Donald Trump’s false or misleading claims, we recorded 492 suspect claims in the first 100 days of his presidency. On Nov. 2 alone, the day before the 2020 vote, Trump made 503 false or misleading claims as he barnstormed across the country in a desperate effort to win reelection.

This astonishing jump in falsehoods is the story of Trump’s tumultuous reign. By the end of his term, Trump had accumulated 30,573 untruths during his presidency — averaging about 21 erroneous claims a day.

 Is there any expectation whatever that this leopard will change his spots when he goes before the committee?

Committee chairman Bennie Thompson believes Trump should have a chance to tell the truth. He said before the committee took its unanimous vote: “He is the one person at the center of the story of what happened on Jan. 6. So we want to hear from him. The committee needs to do everything in our power to tell the most complete story possible and provide recommendations to help ensure that nothing like Jan. 6 ever happens again. We need to be fair and thorough in getting the full context for the evidence we’ve obtained.”

This committee is in no mood to give Trump a podium.  He has had a lot of them during the committee’s work and truth always has been in short supply on those occasions.

He can’t bully this committee. He can’t intimidate its members.  His best choice might be to meet under the committee’s rules and take the Fifth Amendment instead of answering questions, thereby avoiding possible perjury charges, as he did more than 400 times a couple of months ago when giving a deposition in the New York Attorney General’s investigation into possible real estate frauds.

Isn’t it interesting that telling the committee he is exercising his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination might be the most truthful thing he can say—or has said about those events?

 

Sports: Chiefs lose, Logano wins, A champion steps away

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing editor

(BASEBALL)—The post-season playoffs have developed a big underdog issue.

San Diego, which won 89 games in the regular season, has ousted the Dodgers, who won 111.

The Phillies, winners of 87, have dumped the Braves, winners of 101.

So far only Houston, winners of 106, has played to form, topping Seattle in three straight. Settle won 87 in the regular season.

Cleveland’s Guardians, making the playoffs in the first season with their new name and 92 wins in the regular season, play the deciding game against the Yankees, winners of 99 this afternoon. Their game was rained out last night.

Tonight Philadelphia and San Diego begin the National League Championship Series.

Thursday night, Houston opens the ALCS against the survivor of tonight’s Guardians-Yankees series.

(FOOTBALL—NFL)—For the second weekend in a row, a Kansas City Chiefs placekicker has set a new team record for longest field goal.  But this time, it didn’t lead to a win.

The Buffalo Bills beat the Chiefs 27-24 on a touchdown with about a minute to play,

The game was tied at 10 at halftime thanks to a 62-yard field goal into the wind by Harrison Butker, who had missed the last few games with an ankle sprain.  His kick broke substitute Matthew Wrights record, a 59-yarder a week earlier.

Patrick Mahomes threw an interception in the end zone in the first quarter and threw a second one that ended the game as the Chief tried to recover from the final Buffalo score.

The win lets the Bills stay a game ahead of the Jets in the Eastern Division. The Chiefs drop to 4-2 but still lead the West over the Chargers, who are 3-2.

(FOOTBALL—MISSOURI TIGERS)—Missouri had the weekend off and is spending this week preparing for Vanderbilt. The Commodores have split six games. Missouri is 2-4, winless in the SEC.  Nashville football columnist Aria Gerson says the game “is one of Vanderbilt’s best shots of winning an SEC game.”

(BASKETBALL—MISSOURI TIGERS)—We’re only about three weeks away from the first University of Missouri-Columbia basketball game. Southern Indiana is the first of the warm-up games for the new-look Tigers on November 7 as they work their way through a non-conference schedule and develop as Dennis Gates’ first Missouri team.

Ken Pomeroy, an atmospheric sciences professor at the University of Utah who has made a science of ranking college basketball teams, ranks Missouri 41st in the country in his Kenpom.com rankings.

(NASCAR)—Joey Logano has made the final four.

Logano’s win at Las Vegas guarantees he’ll be one of the four drivers who will compete for the NASCAR  Cup in the last race of the season next month.  Logano had dropped out of the top ten when he pitted for new tires with 26 laps to go. But he caught leader Ross Chastain with three laps left and led him by eight-tenths of a second at the checkered flag.

Logano, who drove his first Cup race fifteen years ago, wrapped up his 30th career victory. He’ll be chasing his second Cup championship in the final race of the year. He won the title in 2018 and went into the Las Vegas race as the second seed and emerged number one.  The previous number one seed, Chase Elliott, struggled all day and finished 21st.  He dropped to third in the standings.

Chastain, who led a race-high 68 laps, is second in the standings with Elliott and Denny Hamlin making up the rest of the top four.  Hamlin started 31st and finished fifth, behind Chase Briscoe.  Kyle Busch became the only non-contending driver to finish in the top five by crossing the line third.

Two races are left to decide who will be the three drivers joining Logano in the final run for the title.

Christopher Bell was collected in a crash involving Bubba Wallace and Kyle Larson and dropped to the eighth and last contender spot.  Another contender, Ryan Blaney, hit the wall and finished 28th. Contender William Byron finished 13th. Byron, Blaney, Brisco, and Bell are below the cutline headed to next weekend’s race at Homestead-Miami.

(NASCAR—KURT BUSCH)—Kurt Busch, the last active NASCAR Cup driver to compete against Dale Earnhardt Sr., says he’s done as a fulltime Cup driver.  He’s 44, a Daytona 500 winner, and NASCAR’s 2004 champion.

The oldest of the Busch brothers has missed thirteen races since backing his car into a wall in July and suffering a concussion.  He says he might do some selected races next year if doctors say he’s recovered from his concussion, but his days as a fulltime driver are finished.

Tyler Reddick will mover over from Childress Racing and will take Busch’s seat in the 45-car, joining Bubba Wallace on the 23XI team.

Busch was hired by 23XI, co-owned by NBA star Michael Jordan (whose jersey was 23 for most of his career) and driver Denny Hamlin (whose car carries the number 11) to drive last year. The team says he was hired to “elevate our organization in many ways.”  He gave the team its first playoff berth by winning at Kansas earlier this year then had to withdraw from the playoffs because of his injury.

A second driver, Alex Bowman, also has been out of his car because of a concussion in a race three weeks ago. He says he won’t be back on the track until the last race of the year, if then.

NASCAR has announced it will have a re-designed rear section of the chassis available next year. NASCAR hopes it will do a better job absorbing energy in a crash, lessening chances for other drivers to incur the kinds of injuries Busch and Bowman have had to deal with this year.

Photo Credits:  Logano at WWTR—Bob Priddy; Busch at Indianapolis—Rick Gevers

 

 

 

The Colonies and the Mother Country

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The coverage of the change in the British monarchy has rekindled some interest in the comparisons of the United Kingdom with the United States.

Oscar Wilde, the 19th Century wit and playwright had a British character in The Canterville Ghost comment, “We have really everything I common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.”

Through the years, George Bernard Shaw has been credited with turning that comment into, “England and America are two countries separated by the same language!”

The other day, we came across a newspaper column written by former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, whose column, My Day, was syndicated in newspapers by United Features Syndicate nationwide.  She wrote on August 17, 1946 that the relationship between this country and the United Kingdom is “a little like a family relationship where the younger generation breaks completely away from the older generation with the result that relations for a time are very strained.

In most families, however, when either the younger or the older generation is threatened by real disaster, they come together and present a solid front. That doesn’t mean that they will see things in the same light in the future, and it does not necessarily mean approval on either side of the actions of the other—nor even that they might not quarrel again. But it makes future quarreling less probable. It is a kind of “blood is thicker than water” attitude which makes them stand together when a crisis occurs and, year by year, brings better mutual understanding.

She contrasted the characters of our peoples—Americans being people of light exaggeration and the British being people of understatement. Americans are more “dashing and perhaps more volatile” while the British are “more stolid and tenacious”

Remember this was just after World War Two. She recalled a British soldier who said the Americans did not enter the war until they developed an interest in winning, at which point they capitalized on “the hard work and the losses which we have sustained.”

And while Americans might not approve of many things important to the British, she write, there is a belief that we can find ways to live and work together.

In fact, she thought, that attitude is basic to our foreign policy—that “we can find ways to live and work together.”

The Colonies, us, are the kids who leave home.  But when there’s a family crisis, we get together.

Even in today’s world, three-quarters of a century later, she seems to have identified us.

 

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Leaves

Minnie and Max and I were out on the porch a few days ago enjoying a delicious fall day. 70 degrees. No breeze. Sunny.  The sounds of fall around us—birds, an internet cable crew digging through the rocky hillcrest on which we live (we have just enough topsoil to provide room for the roots of grass and for the moles to have a playground), the garbage truck going by—-

All of us were napping. One of us would un-doze long enough to read a few pages of a whodunit that had been brought to the porch.  The others would be instantly alerted by a squirrel dashing along a tree limb or a bird.

But mostly I thought of the leaves. The leaves on the tree or the bush just outside the porch had turned a triumphant yellow and others in the neighborhood were turning red or orange or variations of brown and yellow. I thought of how much I love them.   And how much I shall miss them when the trees turn to skeletons against the gray skies of December and January in particular.

I can’t wait to see the soft glow of green begin to appear each spring and the promise it brings of warmth, and of leaves.

I am a three-season person.

Have you ever noticed in winter how rare it is to look up?

Winter is the time to cast our eyes down for there is nothing of beauty to be seen by looking up.  We look down because we often must watch our step.  We look down because winter makes us feel down.  We look down because there is no color in the world that draws us to look up.

But spring comes and we look expectantly for that green glow and when it grow into the deep green of spring leaves, our eyes are drawn up for there is beauty around us again.  No longer do we look down and in looking down become lost in ourselves.

Leaves do that to us.   They shade us on the hottest days of summer.  They comfort us with their rustling in the breeze.  Within them there is life—scampering creatures and singing birds.

The best days of our lives are the days when we have leaves.

But then they begin to turn and we begin to sit in our glider swing on the porch, Minnie dozing in the chair across the porch, Max in a sun spot, and we ponder the green leaves suddenly turned yellow just outside and we admire the beauty in the world and realize how much we shall miss them when they are gone—that in four or six weeks, they will be crisp and dry and brown on the ground, the joy of their presence turned to a burden to be removed or burned.

Leaves seem to be central to our spirit. Minnie, Max, and I shall sit with them as often as possible as they take their—-their leave.

These are the days of goodbye from our leaves, the bittersweet season, a season to reminisce—as lyricist Johnny Mercer wrote;

The falling leaves
Drift by my window
The autumn leaves
Of red and gold
I see your lips
The summer kisses
The sunburned hands
I used to hold

Since you went away
The days grow long
And soon I’ll hear
Old winter’s song
But I miss you most of all, my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall

Since you went away
The days grow long
And soon I’ll hear
Old winter’s song
But I miss you most of all, my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall

Yes, I miss you most of all, my darling
When autumn leaves start to fall.

 (For the record, the tune was by Joseph Kosma, who composed it in 1945)

In a few weeks, Minnie and Max and I will retreat back inside the house.  It will be warm in there because of the furnace and because of the presence of the other person who lives there with us.

—and helps us get through the days of the downward look until once again the magic of leaves returns and we look up again and find renewed beauty.

Sports: Baseball playoffs; Tigers & Chiefs; NASCAR playoffs

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By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(Baseball)—Well, that sure didn’t take very long, did it?  Two and out for the Cardinals whose big bats went one for fifteen and whose most solid relief pitcher’s finger apparently couldn’t last two innings.  Albert and Yadi went out with base hits in their last times at bat—a fitting conclusion to their careers.

In years to come, young men in the grandstands will be telling their grandchildren, “Yes, I saw Albert Pujols and Yadier Molina play baseball,” much as THEIR grandfathers told them, “I saw Mantle and Musial and Williams” or “Gibson and Marichal and Clemens.”

Across the state, the Royals are looking for a new manager and a new pitching coach.  And some better talent.

In the meantime the playoffs continue although a lot of people no longer care.

(Tigers)—The Missouri Tigers are playing just well enough to drive their fans nuts.  They’re off this week after losing three games they could have won.  This is a team that appears capable of winning only if they play mistake-free.  The break comes at a good time.

(Chiefs)—The Oakland/Los Angeles/Oakland/Las Vegas Raiders played the Kansas City Chiefs (ex-Dallas Texans) for the 127th time last night.  The Chiefs spotted the Raiders the first 17 points then worked their way back into the lead thanks to four short-yardage touchdowns by Travis Kelce, tying a team record and a 59-yard franchise-record field goal from substitute kicker Matthew Wright.  The hinge point of the game came when Wright missed a field goal but the Raiders were called for defensive holding, giving Kansas City a first down and keeping a drive alive that turned into a TD.

Both teams failed on two-points-after efforts and the Chiefs with only a 30-29 lead had to turn the ball over with less than three minutes left. Las Vegas couldn’t get close enough for a winning field goal and the Chiefs get away with a 4-1 record to start the season.

The Chiefs are now 71-54-2 against  O/LA/O/LV.

Now, on to another kind of playoffs:

(NASCAR)—The number of drivers who can win the NASCAR championship has been cut to eight after a competitive and contentious race on the Charlotte Roval—the combination oval and road course.

And in a season known for its unlikely turnouts, Christopher Bell’s victory fits right in.  He had to win to make the round of eight—and he did thanks to pit strategy that gave him fresh tires that let him clear Kevin Harvick on a restart and then pull away for the victory.

On-track incidents turned the day around for several contenders, none so much as 2021 champion Kyle Larson who hit the wall and broke a rear suspension piece on his car. The repairs were made but he was unable to regain enough positions to make the semi-final round. He fell two points short of Chase Briscoe, who had his own adventure when he spun with five laps to go but was able to recover to finish 9th, just enough to move into the next round.

Bell went into the race 33 points below the cut line with no chance to advance unless he finished first. “We were just there at the right time,” he said. “We rolled the dice, gambled, and it paid off for us.”

Also not making the cut was rookie Austin Cindric, the winner of the Daytona 500 at the start of the year. Daniel Suarez lost his power steering but muscled the car to the finish. Unfortunately his finish was 36th, knocking him out of the playoffs, too. Alex Bowman missed his second straight race because of a concussion and is the fourth driver eliminated,

Moving ahead are Chase Eliott, Joey Logano, Ross Chastain, Bell, Ryan Blaney, William Byron, Deny Hamlin, and Briscoe.  The field will be cut to four after three more races and the champion will be decided in the last race of the year. Whichever driver in the final four has the best finish in the last race will wear the crown.

(FORMULA 1)—Max Verstappen raced through a deluge that sometimes left visibility on Japan’s Suzuka Circuit to win his twelfth race in eighteen starts this year and wrap up his second F1 championship.  The race was halted after the first two laps because of the downpour.  His championship was clinched because initial runner-up Charles LeClerc was assessed a five-second penalty that dropped him to third place.  The result leaves Verstappen 113 points in the lead with four races to go, a margin impossible for LeClerc to make up.

Verstappen becomes only the third driver in F1 history to lock up a title with four races left.  Michael Schumacher and Sebastien Vettel are the only other drivers to dominate a season as he has done this year.

(Photo Credit: Bob Priddy, Bell at WWTR)

The silent letter

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We have a big stack of table games that we like to play with friends. One that we like is Bananagram.  I often complain because, unlike Scrabble, there are no points for the letters. And without points, how do we determine a winner?

Nancy just unzips the cloth banana and spills out dozens of tiles with different letters. We turn them upside down and pick the proper starting number of them (usually trying to pick tiles from various parts of the pile—as if that makes any difference) and then each person starts his own little word-building.  The end result is a crossword-looking series without any lines and with no clues.  If you have leftover tiles after you spell your first series of words, you say the proper word and everybody draws another tile. The person who runs out of tiles first is the winner.

But there are no points!!!   How do we identify a winner after a night of full-contact Bannanagram if the losers of each game don’t get points?

We also play other word games such as Quiddler and Wordspiel.  And other non-word card games including one with five suits called Five Crowns.  And games that aren’t word games such as Labyrinth,  Dominoes, and Rummikub.

Whether it’s because we play word games at the table or because we make a living out of stringing words into columns or articles or books or speeches, we find the English language pretty fascinating.  Maybe it goes back to one of our first jobs being the proofreader of the National Broom and Broom Corn News, which had an unpleasantly picky and prickly editor, in Arcola, Illinois or because we had some pretty good English teachers along the way.  (The NB&BCN was a contract print job that the Arcola Record-Herald published for the broom corn industry that was big in central Illinois then).

That’s probably why we had to do some hard thinking when we saw an article in Mental Floss by Michele Debczak about the only letter in our alphabet that cannot be silent.

(Let’s pause here for a bit so you can ruminate on this. Come back whenever you’re ready.)

The English language is a really hard language and a lot of us never learn it or never quit learning it.  The other day I admonished a friend for saying something such as, “George and myself are going to the game next Friday.” That sentence construction is fingernails on a blackboard.  Suppose George wasn’t going with you.  Would you say, “Myself is going to the game Friday?”  Think of a sentence that way and you’ll probably say or write it correctly.

Psychosis.   Gnu.  (In Africa a couple of years ago, I took a picture of several Wildebeests standing around.  I called it “Gnus Conference.”)  Mnemonic.  Silent letters.

Some letters have multiple personalities. Hard and soft “c,” or “g.” A great example is “Ghoti,” which is pronounced “fish.”  You know, “gh” as in “enough.”  “O” as in “women,” and “ti” as in “action.”

Ms. Debczak points to some foreign words we have appropriated for our own use that have silent letters.  French gives us the silent “z” as in “Chez.” Spanish gives us a silent “j,” as in “marijuana.”  Come to think of it, the “z” in Debczak probably is silent.

She apparently has read the Merriam-Webster Dictionary because she says the only letter in that entire dictionary that is never, ever silent is (drum roll):

V

If the “v” were silent, we would be saying “I loe you.”  Politicians would proclaim “ictory” after citizens had cast their “otes.”  Poetry would be “erse.”  Olive oil would be extra “irgin olie oil”  We’d have to find another word to describe these political times. “Diisie” would not work.

Get out your dictionary. Look at all the “V” words.

Let us know if you find one with a silent “V.”   And once you’ve done that, find the rhyme for “orange.”