Sports: Racing—A million-dollar win; a first win; a painful finish

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(INDYCAR)—Josef Newgarden has won three times this year on the INDYCAR circuit and those three times have produced a million-dollar bonus.

Because he’s the first driver to win an oval race, a street race, and a road course race this year, he has turned a normal win into a big windfall for his team and for his favorite charity.  PeopleReady, an employment services company, sponsors a car for Christian Lundgaard, another INDYCAR driver, offered the bonus to the first driver to win on all three types of courses on the circuit this year.

Half of the money goes to the Team Penske and the other half will be split between SeriousFun Children’s Network and Wags and Walks Nashville, a dog rescue nonprofit.

Newgarden finished about 3.4 seconds ahead of Marcus Ericsson, the Indianapolis 500 winner. Ericsson now has four straight top-seven finishes and has replaced Newgarden teammate Will Power atop the points list. Alexander Rossi, who started from the pole was third, his second podium finish this month and this third straight top-five finish.

Newgarden got the jump on the final re-start. He led 26 of the race’s 55 laps on the Road America course.

INDYCAR is off next week before running at Mid-Ohio on July 3.

(NASCAR)—In the entire 65-year history of NASCAR only five drivers born outside the United States have won a Cup race.  Daniel Suarez finally put it all together to get his first Cup win after 195 starts, pulling away from Chris Buescher to win on the road could win on the road course at Sonoma.

Suarez, native of Mexico, led 47 of the 110 laps and beat Buescher to the stripe by almost four seconds to become the first Mexican driver to win at NASCAR’s highest level. He led the last 26 laps.  Michael McDowell got the third podium position with Kevin Harvick, Austin Cindric, Ryan Blaney, Clay Chastain, Chase Elliott, William Byron and Brad Keselowski rounding out the top ten.

Defending series champion Kyle Larson, who started from the pole, finished 15th after losing a wheel late in the race.

It has been almost a decade since the last victory in the Cup series by a foreign-born driver—Australia’s Marcus Ambrose’s victory at Watkins Glen in August, 2012. It was his second win in NASCAR’s top series. He also won at The Glen a year earlier. Colombia’s Juan Pablo Montoya also was a two-time winner—Watkins Glen in 2010 and at Sonoma in 2007.

Italian Mario Andretti won the Daytona 500 in 1967 and Canadian Earl Ross won at Martinsville in 1974.

Suarez is the fourth first-time winner this year and the 12th different winner in this season. His win increases the pressure on drivers who are 17th and lower in the points.  Only the top sixteen winners and non-winners with enough points will qualify for the playoffs after 26 races. Sonoma was the 16th points race of 2022.

The four non-winners still within the top sixteen are Ryan Blaney, Martin Truex Jr., Christopher Bell, and Aric Almirola. Kevin Harvick is barely out of the top 16 with Tyler Reddick and Austin Dillon next.

One other note: Teammates Chase Elliott and Kyle Larson combined to lead 52 laps, enough to give Hendrick-backed cars more than 100,000 miles led in NASCAR races, the first time in NASCAR’s 75-year history a team has reached that figure.

NASCAR is off next weekend, returning on the 26th at Nashville.

(FORMULA 1)—Defending F1 champion Max Verstappen won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix with teammate Sergio Perez following him across the finish line but two issues competed with the Red Bull team for attention in and after the race.

Red Bull’s closest competitor this year, Ferrari, again had reliability issues with number two driver Carlos Sainz pulling out of the race on the ninth lap with hydraulic failure and the lead driver, Charles Leclerc, sideline by an engine failure eleven laps later.

And Mercedes continues to struggle with the “porpoising” problems that have besieged Lewis Hamilton and George Russell all season long.  Russell salvaged a third place and Hamilton finished fourth but both complained that their cars started bouncing at high speeds. Mercedes has tried to solve the problem of cars bouncing at high speed all season long but still have had no success.

Hamilton complained of bouncing so severe that he was suffering severe back pains on the rough track during the race, which he called “the worst race ever, probably the most painful race I have experienced and the toughest battle with the car I have ever experienced as well.”

(Photo credit: Bob Priddy, Indianapolis 2021)

 

T.A.L.K.

It’s clear that too much of our political dialogue in this country has lost any semblance of courtesy.

I trace much of that loss to the medium that was my life for more than fifty years and to a slight degree still is. Radio.

Radio had been consigned to insignificance (again) by the early 1980s. But satellite-delivered content became more practical and with it voices that were no longer local and often no longer respective of listeners, guests or callers came into our radios. After all, the show was about them, not about the community and the residents radio stations lived with. Nationally-distributed talk radio is considered the savior of the AM band.

Now look at where we are.  Not just in radio but in our political circles and even in our daily verbal intercourse with one another, even among family members. And it’s less than two months before the August primary elections and—-Oh, Lord! The flood of thirty-seconds of irrationality that will assault our eyes and ears and insult our intelligences.

The other day we found a concert by Glen Campbell with the South Dakota Symphony on YouTube. It showcased his great voice, his incredible guitar-playing, and even a solo with bagpipes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iJahIKswWo

He closed the concert, as he often did, with a song by Bobby Austin and Carl Sapaugh: Try a Little Kindness—

If you see your brother standing by the road
With a heavy load from the seeds he sowed
And if you see your sister falling by the way
Just stop and say, “You’re going the wrong way”

You’ve got to try a little kindness
Yes, show a little kindness
Just shine your light for everyone to see
And if you try a little kindness
Then you’ll overlook the blindness
Of narrow-minded people on the narrow-minded streets

Don’t walk around the down and out
Lend a helping hand instead of doubt
And the kindness that you show every day
Will help someone along their way

You got to try a little kindness
Yes, show a little kindness
Just shine your light for everyone to see
And if you try a little kindness
Then you’ll overlook the blindness
Of narrow-minded people on the narrow-minded streets

You got to try a little kindness
Yes, show a little kindness
Just shine your light for everyone to see
And if you try a little kindness
Then you’ll overlook the blindness
Of narrow-minded people on the narrow-minded streets

T.A.L.K.   Kindly.  We really need it these days. It’s time we got smart enough to ignore the self-centered lousy examples we have all around us and rise above them.

They don’t want us to do that. They profit if we continue to dwell in blindness, narrow-mindedness and narrow-minded streets.  But we know we can be better than their examples.

We DO know that, don’t we?

It’s time we kicked the mud off our shoes.

 

Our Weimar Moment

Weimar, Germany is the country’s celebrated cultural city, the home of writers Friedrich Schiller and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Composer Franz Liszt lived there for a time, as did 16th century painter Lucas Cranach the Elder.  Walter Gropius founded the  Bauhaus movement and the Bahaus School of design there. It also was the home for a time of artists and architects such as Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, and Henry van de Velde. Composer Richard Strauss and philosopher Fredreich Nietzsche also lived there briefly. It is the city where Germany’s first democratic constitution was signed. It lasted from the end of World War I to 1933, when Hitler killed the Weimar Republic.

It also is four miles from the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp.

At various times in World War II and the years leading to it, 240,000 people were imprisoned and where an estimated 56,545 died or were murdered.

And the people of Weimar claimed they did not know of what was happening there—-although slave laborers from the camp worked in its munitions industry.  When American soldiers found the camp in early April, 1945, they were stunned by the human wreckage the Nazis had left behind.  General Patton ordered the soldiers to go to Weimar and round up thousands of the “unaware” citizens and force them to tour the camp to see the atrocities being conducted in the name of their country.  A reporter for The Guardian, a British newspaper wrote:

There in groups of 100 they were conducted on a tour of the crematorium with the blackened frames of bodies still in the ovens and two piles of emaciated dead in the yard outside, through huts where living skeletons too ill or weak to rise lay packed in three-tier bunks, through the riding stables where Thuelmann, the German Communist leader, and thousands of others were shot, through the research block where doctors tried new serums on human beings with fatal consequences in 90 per cent of the cases.

It was an experience they can never forget. Most of the women and some of the men were in tears as they moved from block to block. Many were crying bitterly. Some of the women fainted and could be taken no farther.

Legendary American journalist Edward R. Murrow toured the camp three days after the Army arrived.  He was so shaken by what he saw that he waited three days to broadcast his story by short-wave radio back to CBS in New York. I believe it is the greatest broadcast in radio and television history:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlhQvPfYSXk

A few days later, the Dean in Weimar, Richard Kade, speaking for the Protestant church in Germany said, “We carry no blame for these atrocities.”  In a memorial service many years later, one of Kade’s successors, Henrich Herbst, admitted Protestant Christians had not “courageously admitted and put a name” to the “unspeakable suffering of women and children, Jews, communists, Social Democrats and Christians” at Buchenwald.

I visited Weimar on a lovely June morning when the streets near the town square were filled with singing and music by college students whose year had ended, where merchants had set up their little booths on the square selling their wares.  I bought a gold gingko leaf pin for Nancy that day. The gingko is the official tree of Weimar.

We had lunch with the mayor and after that, as a cold front had moved through the area and the afternoon was chilly and misty, we visited Buchenwald.

And we saw the ovens.

And urns filled with ashes.

And we put little stones on the outlines of the barracks that Murrow described so graphically.

And we all thought of people living four miles away who chose not to know what was happening at Buchenwald.

We are living a Weimar moment in America today.

A special Congressional Committee is taking us on a graphic tour of January 6, 2021.  But there are those who want to ignore the brutal ghastliness of that day and its attack on our democratic-republic form of government.

Murrow began his historic broadcast, “Permit me to tell you what you would have seen and heard had you been with me on Thursday.  It will not be pleasant listening. If you are at lunch or if you have no appetite to hear what Germans have done, now is a good time to switch off the radio for I propose to tell you of Buchenwald.”

Last Thursday might, Congressman Bennie Thompson sounded a 21st Century equivalent to Murrow’s introduction: “We can’t sweep what happened under the rug… So, tonight and over the next few weeks, we’re going to remind you of the reality of what happened that day, but our work must do much more than just look backwards. The cause of our democracy remains in danger. The conspiracy to thwart the will of the people is not over. There are those in this audience who thirst for power, but have no love or respect for what makes America great, devotion to the Constitution, allegiance to the rule of law, our shared journey to build a more perfect union. January 6th and the lies that led to insurrection have put two and a half centuries of constitutional democracy at risk.”

Twenty-million television viewers that night began the equivalent of the tour the citizens of Weimar were forced to take.  That night and in meetings to come, we will see what many of us have chosen not to see or to know. It will not be pleasant viewing.  If you have no appetite to hear what has been done, this is a good time to turn off the television for the committee is going to explain what happened on January 6.

Just as Wiemar residents in 1945 chose to turn away from what was right in front of them, there were many who chose to, and will choose in future hearings to, look away, to seek out channels where the work of the committee is ignored or downplayed or where they will be encouraged to think of other things. If you don’t think about what happened on January 6 and why, it didn’t happen.  You “carry no blame” for those events.

The Post-Dispatch reported the major Republican candidates for Roy Blunt’s Senate seat seem to have adopted the Weimar Defense.  They took to Twitter to attack the committee findings—even before the hearing Thursday night began.

Eric Greitens called the hearing a “show trial.” Mark McCloskey expanded on that idea by calling the hearing a “fraud show trial” and claimed it is “government abuse you expect from Soviet Russia, China or North Korea.”  Eric Schmitt called the committee “a joke.”  Vicky Hartzler wants her people to ignore what the leader of her party might have done (we’ll learn more specifically what his role in that dark day was in more detail later) and look at her perceived failures of President Biden and congressional Democrats. She called the hearing a “sham.” Billy Long said it was a “reality show” that avoided Democratic party failures on various issues.

McCloskey is dead wrong. There are no congressional hearings in Soviet Russia looking into Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, no hearings in China on that country’s repression in Hon Kong, and no investigations in North Korea about the impoverished population and the saber-rattling of the country’s leader.

A joke?

We wonder if those who think the hearings are a joke smiled as Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards recounted when the mob moved in while she and her fellow officers tried to hold them back with nothing more than bike racks. “I felt the bike rack come on top of my head and I was pushed backwards and my foot caught on the stair behind me and I—my chin hit the handrail. And then I—at that point I had blacked out. But my—the back of my head clipped the concrete stairs behind me.”

And were they chuckling when she described regaining consciousness and went to help those trying to hold back the mob on the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol and, “more and more people, you know, started coming on to the west front?”

The arrival of Metropolitan Police officers stopped the advance so, “for a while I started decontaminating people who had gotten sprayed and treating people medically who—who needed it.”

Did the joke get funnier as she described getting back behind the next line of bike racks and being sprayed in the eyes and another officer started to take her away to get decontaminated but they never made it because they were tear gassed? “I saw, I can just remember by—my breath catching in my throat because what I saw was just a—a war zone…I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were officers on the ground…they were bleeding. They were throwing up.”

And were those saying the hearing was a joke dissolve into side-holding laughter as Edwards told the committee, “I saw friends with blood all over their faces.  I was slipping in people’s blood…Never in my wildest dreams did I think that, as a police officer, as a law enforcement officer, I would find myself in the middle of a battle.”

That’s really hilarious.

There was nothing funny about what happened January 6. And those who suggest that these hearings are a show or a joke or a fraud or who suggest we become like the citizens of a city known for its culture who chose not to want to know about the hideous events on their doorsteps are beneath respect.

Jesus told his followers (John 8:31-32), “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Our freedom is at risk with those who think the search for the truth of what happened January 6 is a fake, a fraud, a show, or a laughing matter.

This is our Weimar moment.  If we are to be disciples of freedom, we must not be afraid to see the truth of what happened January 6 and how it came about. The committee will escort us through that camp.

If we love our country we must be unafraid of what we will see.

The difference one letter makes

The regular consumers of these eloquent literary effusions might have noticed nothing was posted in its usual place on Monday.  That is because your loyal correspondent, in the springtime of his senility, posted the intended Monday meditation on Thursday.   He apparently was too eager to get to St. Louis for an automobile race later in the weekend that he mis-dated the time the material should be exposed to the waiting public.

The column that suggested no place is safe from a “loon with a gun and a grudge” and we should expect a mass shooting to happen wherever we are elicited two responses, nonetheless.  One suggested just doing away with the Second Amendment.

To be clear, for any who felt the column advocated such a thing:

If we did away with the Second Amendment I would have no right to own my Daisy BB gun!  Or my father’s J. C. Whitney .22 rifle or the antique 12-gauge shotgun with the crossover stock.   I’m not advocating eliminating the Second Amendment although some of the (to me) irrational defense of it might need to be dismissed—and polls indicate large numbers of Americans agree with the assessment that it is time for some social and legal parameters to be established within the amendment’s framework.

The problem is the difference made by one letter.  The letter is “L.”

Pols versus polls.

Sometimes our political figures love polls.  If they’re winning.

Sometimes our political figures hate polls.  If they’re losing.

But polls seem to mean nothing to our Pols who are deafened by an adequate number of dollar bills that they allow to be inserted into their ears.

It’s not just this issue, either.

While individual political leaders and/or candidates steadfastly deny that currency-filled campaign coffers affect their votes; that they only buy access—the additional “access” seems often to be convincing of the rightness of the donor’s position.

The dollar value of political courage has never been calculated, but in this issue there seems to be some kind of a threshold that tips the recipient away from the popular will. And there seems to be an organization among many organizations that has the biggest thumb on the scales because it has the greatest concentration of paper ear plugs. .

As long as courage is cheap and access is for sale, the polls on mass shootings will mean enough Pols will keep any significant parameters from being established within the Second Amendment.

So my BB gun is safe.

But the question is: When will things become so disastrous that “access” cannot be bought?

Underlining that rhetorical question is the results from this weekend.

People at a graduation party in Summerton, SC (a town that previously had never made any national headlines your correspondent has noticed) didn’t think it could happen there.  Nor did people at a bar in Chattanooga, TN. Or people living their lives in the moment on a busy street in Philadelphia. The 100 people at a party at a Phoenix strip mall probably hadn’t given a mass shooting a thought—until they were the middle of one. The same likely is true of a similar crowd at a graduation party at a private home in Socorro, TX.   Or the people at a bar in Mesa, AZ.  And a gas station parking lot fight in Macon, GA leaves one dead and three others hurt.

The news aggregation site AXIOS* calculates the total at 11 dead and 54 others hurt, just this weekend.

Just another weekend in America where, as The Onion has observed more than 20 times:

‘NO WAY TO PREVENT THIS,’

SAYS ONLY NATION WHERE

THIS REGUARLY HAPPENS

 

The Quick.

And the Dead.

The Pols.

The Polls.

And the dollars keep going into the ears of those who find it beneficial to be deaf.

-0-

*The AXIOS weekend scorecard:

Summerton:  Two cars stop at a house where a graduation party is being held and shots are fired into the house. One dead. Seven wounded.

Chattanooga: Shooting near a bar. Fourteen wounded by gunshots. Three others hit by cars. Two dead by gunshot wounds. One dead when run over by a car fleeing the scene.

Philadelphia: Three dead and at least eleven others hurt when three shooters open fire on a busy street.

Phoenix: One dead, eight others hurt in altercation at a party led to shooting.  The dead person is a 14-year old girl.  Two of the wounded have life-threatening injuries.

Socorro: A fight at a high school graduation party turns into a shooting. Five teenagers wounded.

Macon: Argument in gas station parking lot leaves one dead and three hurt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sports—Racing: Penske Weekend Sweep

by Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(NASCAR)—Joey Logano has begun a new era for NASCAR in the St. Louis region by winning a last laps duel with Kyle Busch at Worldwide Technology Raceway.  The race with the Gateway Arch in view, at a track that almost disappeared eleven years ago after the apparent last NASCAR Cup race on October 23, 2010, marked the decade-long resurrection under owner Curtis Francois.

Francois bought the track two weeks before its grandstands were to be sold for scrap and its grounds cleared to make way for an industrial park for nearby Granite City and has turned it into a center for the major American auto racing series backed by the NHRA, INDYCAR, and now the NASCAR Cup series.

Logano did not get his first lead until the 208th lap of what turned into a 245-lap race, only to give it up to Kyle Busch twenty laps leader on a restart.  But he got another chance after one last yellow flag when he got a push on the restart from Penske teammate Ryan Blaney that put him back in front.  Busch got past him briefly on the backstretch before Logano got under Busch and back into the lead going into the final lap.

He finished 0.655 seconds ahead of Kyle Busch whose elder brother Kurt got between him and Blaney.

The race ended with some hard feelings, mostly caused by eighth-place finisher Ross Chastain, who confessed after the race that he had done a horrible job of driving and kept running into people.  The first one he hit was Denny Hamlin. Who went into the wall in turn two (that’s Hamlin at the wall and Chastain in car #1).  Hamlin’s car was never the same although he soldiered on going fast enough to meet minimum speed requirements. He finished 34th, eleven laps down.  He has indicated there will be retribution in some later race.

Chastain also caused a wreck when he tried to force his way between Chase Elliott (left) and Austin Dillon as they were running just outside the top 12 and forced Elliott to spin in front of the rest of the field.  Elliott got back underway but his day was spoiled. He finished 21st.

Chastain, who knows a racetrack woodshedding from Hamlin and Elliott will be administered in some future race told FOX Sports broadcaster Jamie Little, “I’m supposed to be better than that…I owe half the field an apology. I can’t continue to make the same mistakes. I’ll have to pay for it on the track.”

Logano joins Chastain, Hamlin, and William Byron as two-time winners of NASCAR Cup races this year. Elliott also has a victory this year.

The race was a sellout. Logano discussed events afterwards.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n406_Yz9gbk

(INDYCAR)—While the St. Louis area was celebrating a new beginning, Detroit was seeing an end to INDYCAR racing on the Belle Isle circuit. Penske driver Will Power, who suffered a heartbreaking loss last year, dominated this year’s race to win his 41st career INDYCAR victory.  But he had to hold off Alexander Rossi who launched a late race charge to the front for the second week in a row.

Pit strategy was a factor as Power stopped for tires and fuel only twice while Rossi made three stops. Power made his last stop with 19 laps left in the 70-lap race. He led by almost 16.1 seconds but was on tires that degraded faster than the tires Rossi was using.  He still led by 12.1 with ten to go.  But Power got behind slow-running Jack Harvey, the lead dropped to 7.7 seconds with five laps left, then to 6.5 with three laps left. It was only 2.8 seconds at the start of the final lap and when the checkered flag fell, Power was only 1.0027 seconds ahead.

“I think one more lap would have been really interesting,” Rossi said after the race. “But you’ve got to give credit to (Power’s pit crew) and Will.  That’s hard to do at the end, to hang on.”

Power’s win came a year after he dominated the Belle Isle circuit until the race was stopped because of a crash and his car would not restart before the race resumed.  He called his weekend victory “just redemption from last year.”

The win moves Power into the INDYCAR points lead by three points over Marcus Ericsson, who won the previous weekend’s Indianapolis 500.

INDYCAR is not leaving Detroit, just Belle Isle.  Next year, Power, Rossi and the others will race on a circuit through the streets of the city.

Rossi will be with a new team for next year’s race. He’s leaving Andretti Autosports and has signed with Arrows-McLaren for 2023.

(FORMULA 1)—Formula 1 is getting ready for the Grand Prix of Azerbaijan in Baku. Azerbaijan is a former member of the Soviet Union. It declared its independence in 1991.

(Photo credits:  WWTR—Bob Priddy; Power—Rick Gevers at Indianapolis)

 

It’s Going to Happen Here

Wherever you are when you read this you should resign yourself to the fact that somebody is going to kill a bunch of people in your town. Just pray you are not in the church, school, hospital, shopping mall, business, office—nowhere is safe from the loon with a gun and a grudge.

So just get ready to mourn.  Maybe you should get ready to die.

You just never know.

This is being written on Thursday, June 2, 2022.  Education Week calculates the Uvalde, Texas school shooting was the 27th school shooting this year, the 119th school shooting since 2018.

That’s just schools.

The Gun Violence Archive has counted 212 mass shootings in this country this year—incidents in which four or more people were killed or wounded, not counting the shooter.

Thoughts and prayers offered, or maybe somebody just thinks about thoughts and prayers because it’s easy to say.

But nothing seems likely to change.

We hear the same demands for SOMEBODY to do SOMETHING after every incident.  We hear the same claims that doing SOMETHING won’t solve ANYTHING—every time.

Truth is, our policy making system is paralyzed by fear that doing something will antagonize the most rabid supporters of gun rights, that elections might be lost, campaign funding might be switched to others, will violate the sacredness of the Second Amendment (and, by the way, spare me the BS about the First Amendment existing only because there is a Second Amendment, not after 19 children and two adults will no longer experience First Amendment rights because somebody decided to exercise his Second Amendment right.).

No part of the United States Constitution is immune from interpretation and no law is absolute. The Second Amendment is not above limits.

It is easy to be pessimistic about any kind of political effort to reduce these tragedies because there is a sickness within a political system that seems to think it proper for candidates to campaign by showing us their prowess with the kinds of weapons used to kill students and shoppers and hospital personnel, among others.

The irony of those who think they can show their defense of American values with commercials showing them shooting weapons of mass murder is that their commercials tacitly endorse phrase first uttered in 1927 by Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong: “Political Power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

This kind of appeal for political support is abhorrent.

Unfortunately, it seems to work.

And that’s sick.

Is there a legitimate use for a weapon, or its replica, designed specifically to fire large quantities of bullets except in the military services the weapons were designed for in the first place?

Self-defense you say. Let’s see.  A character in Buffalo, NY was defending himself against dangerous shoppers at a mall.  Another character was defending himself against threatening fourth graders in Uvalde, Texas.  And a third was defending himself against his doctor.

And those are only the latest examples as we write this.

Do you feel safer knowing that dangerous shoppers, threatening fourth graders, and a doctor widely respected for his volunteer service are no longer threatening the peace and dignity of society?

THE ONION, a satirical newspaper that often looks at the absurdities of life, has published the same story 21 times after 21 mass shootings.  It re-published all 21 of them on its web page last week. The headline is always the same:

‘NO WAY TO PREVENT THIS,’

SAYS ONLY NATION WHERE

THIS REGUARLY HAPPENS

The text is always the same except for the dateline:

TULSA—In the days following a violent rampage in Oklahoma in which a lone attacker killed four individuals in addition to himself, and seriously injured several others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Tuesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said New Mexico resident Ellen Robinson, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep this guy from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what he really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past five years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

The shame of it is that the article is true.

And that’s why all of us need to be rehearsing our statements of shock and sorrow, or our survivors should be rehearsing statements of shock and sorrow, because these incidents will not stop on their own.

And as long as they go on, we might as well consider it inevitable that it’s going to happen here, wherever “here” is to you.

—-because there’s no way to prevent it.

And your town and my town are as likely candidates for this “distinction” as any place.

It is going to happen here.

Give up.  Expect it.

Nobody’s going to stop it.

Are they?

-0-

The Streets of America

I’m on the Missouri River Regional Library Board and we have a special social problem we’re trying to work out.

The public library is a place where homeless people (the current politically correct phrase for them seems to be “the unhoused”) can go to stay cool on hot days, warm on cold days, dry on wet days. There are public bathrooms, chairs to sit in, benches to sit on, newspapers and books to read.

Some folks drink. Some folks sleep.  Some folks have or cause problems.

They can’t fill their days hanging around in downtown businesses, including restaurants, shoe stores, clothing stores, offices, and the like.  So they gravitate to a public place (the courthouse and city hall don’t work) such as a library.

So the library staff is put in an awkward position.  These folks are the “public” and our building is a public place. But some of our “homed” (if you will) patrons aren’t comfortable when they come into the library and have to walk past these folks outside the front door or sitting with their bag of belongings inside. We have to respect their discomfort.

It’s a humanitarian issue and it’s a community issue and we’re working with some local groups to explore better options for these homeless citizens and for us and our patrons.

Some of our readers might recall the 70s duo of Brewer and Shipley—Michael Brewer and Tom Shipley.  They’re still around and they still perform together.  We had them a few years ago for our Community Concert series.

Some folks have never gotten over their big hit, “One Toke Over the Line,” about smoking marijuana.  But what once was radical music is becoming mainstream living.

One of the songs they did at our concert was “The Streets of America.”  It came to mind the other day when we were thinking about this special issue at the library.

In this era when political advantage is being sought by those who stoke fears that immigrants are inherently evil and a threat to American Values (a vague phrase that has had whatever blood is in it sucked out by whose own criteria for Americanism are not above question), or some people should just not be seen where other folks live and work, we were reminded of that song. We found a video of a Brewer and Shipley concert on YouTube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrzGpwvmoQ4

The song is about 50 minutes in.

They wrote the song in 1993. It’s copyrighted by Eye Forty Four Music (as in I-44, which goes through Tom Shipley’s town of Rolla—Michael lives in Branson). It’s on their “Shanghai” CD.

Leaving home, losing pride
Some suffer, some simply die
For a glance at the streets of America

I’m not sure why they call it the land of the free
But I know why they call it the home of the brave

I see sisters and brothers
Trading one heartache for another
And a shot at the streets of America

Those who have they ain’t givin’
Those who don’t are workin’ for a livin’
They’re forgotten on the streets of America

I’m not sure why they call it the land of the free
But I know why they call it the home of the brave

I hear so many voices
Telling me there ain’t many choices
When you sleep on the streets of America

I’m not sure why they call it the land of the free
But I know why they call it the home of the brave
I’m not sure why they call it the land of the free
But I know why they call it the home of the brave

“I hear so many voices telling me there ain’t many choices when you sleep on the streets of America,” they sing.

Reciting the Biblical adage that “the poor will always be with us” doesn’t solve the problem of those who sleep on our streets because it misinterprets the issue.

In a place defined by some as a “Christian nation,” the statement should not be used as a dismissive.  It should be seen as the obligation such a nation should assume if it truly believes in the words of the one who said, “Inasmuch as you do for the least of these…..”

It’s not often that we think of a library as a place where this obligation is played out.

But it is.

 

Sports:  Racing—Memorial Day Mayhem at Indianapolis, Charlotte, Monte Carlo

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

(RACING)—From the glamorous streets of Monte Carlo to the historic oval at Indianapolis, to NASCAR’s longest race in Charlotte, Memorial Day in traditionally auto racing’s biggest day (although the longest days are reserved for LeMans and Daytona 24hour races).  Let’s recap:

(INDYCAR)—Take the entire population of St. Louis (about 304,000 people) and put them into an area less than one square mile and then have 33 cars running 220 mph within that space—-and you have the 2022 Indianapolis 500.

Marcus Ericsson, a native of Sweden running his fourth 500, had the field covered with less than ten of the 200 laps left. And then NASCAR star Jimmie Johnson, a rookie in open-wheel racing’s biggest event, crashed with seven laps to go. Two laps later, the red flag brought the race to a halt so it could finish at speed.

The race resumed at full speed with only two laps left, locking Ericsson into an intense battle with Pato O’Ward, with five former winners—with 9 victories in the 500 among them—in the final scramble behind them.  Ericsson was holding off O’Ward when Sage Karam crashed on the last lap, freezing the field as it came around for the checkered flag.

The two crashes ended late race surges by former winners Tony Kanaan, who finished third in what might be his last 500; Alexander Rossi, who had charged from 20th to fifth at the end; four-time winner Helio Castroneves who had methodically worked his way from 27th to seventh; Simon Pagenaud, who was closely behind Castroneves, and two-time winner Juan Pablo Montoya, who started 30th and crossed the line 11th, less than eleven seconds behind Ericsson.

Twenty-two cars finished on the lead lap within 25.2 seconds of the winner including another former winner, Scott Dixon, who started from the pole, led 95 laps, and seemed able to withstand challenges from everybody else.  Dixon, however, was caught going to fast into the pits for his last stop on lap 177 and had to make a drive-through penalty that put him at the back of the leading-lap cars. He finished 21st.

It was no consolation to Dixon that he broke Al Unser Sr.’s record for most laps led in the 500. He has led 665 laps in his career, breaking Unser’s record of 644. Ralph DePalma, one of the pioneers of the sport, is third on the list now with 612 laps led.  Unser won the race four times. Dixon and DePalma each have only one victory.

Dixon also holds the record for leading the most laps in a 500 (6 times), led 12 times to up his record number of times leading the race to 70, and stayed even with Tony Kanaan for leading the most 500s (15).

Ericsson ran in the top five most of the day but led only 13 laps, the fewest since Juan Pablo Montoya led only nine in 2015.He is the second Swedish driver to win the race.  Kenny Brack won the race in 1999.

Ericsson has a unique history in INDYCAR competition.  He has won three races in the series.  In all three, the race was red-flagged late so it could be finished at speed.

His win brought him $3.1 million, the largest winner’s reward in Indianapolis 500 history, part of a total purse of more than $16-million, the largest payout ever in the event.

The average payout at last night’s victory banquet was $485,000.

One reason for the record purse was the attendance, estimated at 325,000, the first time the Indianapolis Motor Speedway has opened its gates with no Covid restrictions in three years.

Jimmie Johnson, who won four stock car races at the Speedway in his NASCAR days, was named rookie of the year for the 500, adding $50,000 to the $207,900 he earned for his 28th-place finish.

(NASCAR)—NASCAR’s traditionally longest race of the year became the longest race in its history, with Denny Hamlin outdueling Kyle Busch in two overtimes.  The race, a 600-mile Memorial Day tradition, covered 619.5 miles before Hamlin crossed the finish line a mere 0.119 seconds ahead of Busch.

His victory tended to overshadow an epic comeback by Kyle Larson, who had to start from the rear because of unapproved adjustments to his already-damaged car, then had three pit-road penalties that put him at the back again, sun off the track once, had a pit fire and still was leading the race with two laps to go when Chase Briscoe brought out the caution flag and forced the race into its first overtime.

Larson’s luck ran out on the first overtime effort when he became one of seven cars collected in the last wreck of the night. He still managed to bring his wrinkled car home ninth.

The same wreck also knocked Ross Chastain out of the running. He led 153 of the 413 eventual laps and was the next-to-last car on the lead lap, running 15th, when the race came to a merciful end after five hours, 13 minutes and eight seconds. The average speed was only 118.7 mph.

The race included 18 cautions that covered 90 yellow-flag laps.  It was stopped with 54 laps left in regulation when Daniel Suarez got sideways after contact with Chase Briscoe. Chris Buescher’s car was caught up in the wreck and did five carrel rolls through the infield, coming to rest upside down.  It took several minutes to get the car turned over and for him to climb out unhurt.

At the end of the night, seventeen of the 37 cars that started were in the garage area, unable to continue.

(FORMULA 1)—Heavy rain delayed the start of the Monaco Grand Prix just before the green flag fell and tire decisions by the teams trying to deal with wet/dry track conditions contributed to a race described by some as “chaotic.”

At the end of the day, Red Bull’s number two driver, Sergio Perez, became the first North American to win at Monaco since Canada’s Gilles Villeneuve in 1981. The win is his third career F1 victory, making him the winningest Mexican driver in Formula 1 history, breaking a tie with Pedro Rodriguez, who raced in the 60s and early 70s.

The race was a huge disappointment for Charles Leclerc, the lead driver for Ferrari, who started on pole and finished fourth, a setback on his home track. He now trails Max Verstappen of Red Bull by nine points in the championship standings after leading Verstappen by a wide margin in the early part of the season.

Several drivers admitted they were stunned by the crash that took Haas driver Mick Schumacher out of the race. His car crashed into two barriers with a force so hard that the rear wheels, including the transaxle, were torn from the chassis.  Schumacher climbed from the cockpit unhurt, however.

(Photo Credits: Rick Gevers and Bob Priddy)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hymn to the Fallen

Originally, this was Decoration Day, a day set aside in 1868 at the suggestion of Union General John A. Logan to remember the dead of the Civil War. By 1890 all of the northern states had adopted May 30 as “Decoration Day, a day to decorate the graves of those Civil War soldiers who had died “to make men free,” as the song says.

Two world wars turned the day into a day to remember our nation’s dead from all wars.  It became “Memorial Day” in 1971 when a three-day holiday was created with the last Monday in May, regardless of the date, as the observance.

The Jefferson City Community Band is holding its annual Memorial Day Concert today at the First Christian Church, the usual venue for this concert.

The program is always patriotic music or music with a military orientation.

One of the selections this year is John Williams’ Hymn to the Fallen from the 1998 Stephen Spielberg movie “Saving Private Ryan.”

The movie is the story of a World War II Army Ranger unit’s search for a Private James Ryan, an Iowa farm boy whose three brothers have been killed in action.  The Army wants him sent home, alive, but first he must be found.

The unit is led behind enemy lines by Captain John H. Miller to find Ryan before the War Department has to send a fourth letter of profound regret to his mother.  The unit finds Ryan but pays a tragic price by losing several men to save this one.  Miller is the last, telling Ryan, “Earn this” as he dies—to live a life worthy of the cost of saving him.

The musical motif is repeated at the end of the film as we see the face of Private Ryan (played by Matt Damon) morph into the face of James Ryan (played by Harrison Young) fifty years later, visiting the cemetery at Normandy with his wife, children, and grandchildren.  He finds the simple cross that marks Miller’s grave and kneels.

Old James Ryan: “My family is with me today.  They wanted to come with me.  To be honest with you, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel coming back here.  Every day I think about what you said to me that day on the bridge. I tried to live my life the best that I could. I hope that was enough.  I hope that, at least in your eyes, I’ve earned what all of you have done for me.”

His wife approaches. “James?..”

She looks at the headstone. “Captain John H. Miller.”

Ryan stands and looks at his wife.  “Tell me I have led a good life.”

“What?”

“Tell me I’m a good man.”

“You are,” and she walks back to the family members who have been watching, quietly, as Old James Ryan straightens, and salutes the cross with Miller’s name on it.

Writer John Biguenet, in a 2014 Atlantic Magazine article about the movie concludes that “the living are called not merely to bear witness to the achievement of the fallen heroes; the living are in fact the achievement itself.  Like Private Ryan we cannot help but ask what we’ve done to deserve such sacrifice by others and beg their forgiveness for what we have cost them.  And like James Ryan, all we can do to justify that sacrifice is to live our lives as well as we are able.”

On this Memorial Day, when self-centeredness, too often further corrupted by meanness, burdens our daily discussions, perhaps we can find a moment to justify the sacrifices of those intended to be honored today by living our lives better than we are living them.

When a Missourian won the Indianapolis 500

“Put in front or burn it up,” August Duesenberg told Joe Boyer midway through the 1924 Indianapolis 500.

And he did.

Joe Boyer is the only Missouri native to win the Indianapolis 500 although Missouri’s connection to The Greatest Spectacle in Racing is long and varied, stretching from its earliest days to today.  The story of his victory has been equaled only one other time in the 105 runnings of the race.  The 106th edition will be run Sunday.

The race had changed engine rules in 1923, cutting engine size by one-third to only 122 cubic inches.  The average speed of Tommy Milton’s winning car was about 3.5 mph slower than the winner’s speed in 1922.

But new technology powered Boyer’s car in 1924. It was the first 500 that allowed superchargers and the impact of them was immediate.  Motor Age magazine told readers, “The perfected and groomed 122 cu. in. racing cars not only thrilled the ardent admirers of motor car racing with a new and unexpected record for average mileage but brought them to the ecstasy of sheer joy by setting a pace that rolled the first five over the finish line at greater speeds than the old record.”

The eight fastest qualifiers for the race all ran more than 100 mph with Jimmy Murphy’s Miller Special leading the way at 108.037.  Boyer started fourth, the inside position of the second row, in the field 22 cars, at 104.84.

Joseph Boyer Jr., was 34 years old the day of the race. He was born in St. Louis, the son of the inventor of the first successful rivet gun.  Boyer senior helped one of his employees, William Seward Burroughs develop a “calculating machine” in the company machine shop. Burroughs put Boyer in charge of the American Arithmometer Company that then absorbed a competitor.  The Boyer family moved with Burroughs to Detroit when Joseph junior was 15. The company became the Burroughs Adding Machine Company and Boyer senior served as its president until his death in 1930.

The Boyer family was quite wealthy and Joe Junior soon got into boat and car racing. One day before his 29th birthday, Joe Boyer Jr., started 14th in his first Indianapolis 500.  He lasted only 30 laps before his rear axle failed. The next year, he was the second fastest qualifier but crashed out of the race eight laps from the end and finished 12th.  In 1921, he started fourth again but was sidelined by a failed rear axle again after only 74 of the 200 laps. He missed the 1922 race and Differential failure in 1923 left him 18th.

It appeared his fortunes were changing in 1924, at least for one lap. Reporter Clarence Phillips, in the press box, records, “As they pass the starter Murphy, in his gilded chariot, sprigs ito the lead. ‘Look at Murphy,’ I hear someone say excitedly. But Boyer shoots past Murphy like a streak and finishes the lap in first place…” But by the fifth lap he was “out of the immediate picture suddenly.”

A key was sheared in his supercharger. He could still run but not at competitive speeds.  His teammate, L. L. (Lora Lawrence) Corum (on the left), who started 21st because he was a late qualifier despite having the 16th quickest speed, had worked his way up to ninth at the 150-mile mark.  He was fourth at 200 miles.  Just past the halfway mark, the 109th lap, Corum made a pit stop. Boyer had turned his crippled car over to another driver shortly before and Duesenberg ordered Corum out, put Boyer in and issued his famous order.

He was third behind Murphy and Earl Cooper after 120 of the 200 laps. Twenty laps later he was a minute-25 seconds behind Murphy and Cooper. When Murphy popped a tire on the 146th lap and had to pit, Boyer moved to second and started to close the gap on Cooper and was only 52 seconds back at 375 miles.

The lead shrank to only 37 seconds with 100 miles to go, down to 30 seconds with 30 laps left.

And then on lap 178, “Cooper goes into the pit…, Boyer springing into (the) lead and crowding his supercharger for full benefit…Each time the leaders pass the stands now there is yelling…Cooper gains four seconds…”

Twenty laps left and Boyer has expanded his lead to a minute-to seconds.

“Only ten more laps for Boyer. If he has good luck and drives the rest of the way as consistently as now he’ll win handily.”

Lap 195: “’Boyer is increasing his lead. He wants to finish strong. The starter is getting the flags redy. In one hand he has the green flag and in the other the checker.  Boyer is given a big ovation on the next to the last lap. They know he is the winner unless he falls dead or some other calamity occurs.

“The checkered flag is waved in front of Boyer as he comes down the stretch. He wins.”

He finished the race in five minute more than five hours, an average speed of 98.24 mph, four miles an hour faster than the record set two years earlier.  Cooper finished second and Murphy was third.

Boyer and Corum were recognized as the first co-winners in Indianapolis 500 history. In three other races (1911, 1912, and 1923) the starting drivers had relief drivers for part of the race but they got back behind the wheels and finished the race. This was the first time a winning car started with one driver but finished with a second one in control.

The only other time it has happened in race history was 1941 when Mauri Rose relieved Floyd David on the 72nd lap and went on to win the race. Davis is the only driver in the race’s history to win without leading a single lap. Rose also won the race by himself in 1947 and 1948.

Bowyer remains the only driver to lead the first lap and the last lap of the Indianapolis 500 in different cars.

Boyer drove during an era when some tracks were made of wooden boards and had high banks and featured motorcycle as well as automobile races.  One of those tracks was the Altoona Speedway in Pennsylvania.

The annual Altoona Fall Classic, held about Labor Day, attracted the big names in auto racing.  Boyer again was trying to run down Jimmy Murphy when his car blew a tire and crashed into the guard rail at 125 mph.  Boyer was pinned in the car, his legs crushed.  Rescuers got him to a hospital where both of his legs were amputated and he received blood transfusions. But he died on September 2, 1924, four months after he became the only Missouri driver to win the Indianapolis 500.

Motor Age concluded its article about Boyer’s 500 win, “As a result of this race the talk that has been heard heretofore about the maximum speed of the rack having been reached has been dissipated and some of the experts now confidenty believe that more than 100 miles an hour can be maintained for the 500-mile circuit of the famous speedway.”

On the 97th anniversary of Joe Boyer becoming the first (and so far, only) Indianapolis 500 winner from Missouri Helio Castroneves, using an engine about the same size as the one in Boyer’s car, averaged 190.690 mph in winning his fourth Indianapolis 500.

(Photo credits: Corum and Boyer—Bob Priddy, taken at the IMS Museum; all other illustrations are from Motor Age magazine, June 5,1924)