Author Archives: bpriddy

Racing: Championship chases tighten

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor.

Why is this young man happy?

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

This man has hit another milestone:

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

INDYCAR resumes its season September 12 in Portland, Oregon.

Switching to cars with fenders:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Photo credits: Bob Priddy, Rick Gevers)

Check your fly

Posted on by
Reply

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

HUMAN FLIES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Hope

Posted on by
Reply

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

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

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

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

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

One rock and some dirt.

From the Moon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s time for more exclamation points!

Curbing enthusiasm at Indianapolis

Posted on by
Reply

By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Photo Credits: Rick Gevers, Bob Priddy)

 

 

The simple folk

Posted on by
Reply

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

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

A MISERABLE LIFE

Poverty is a point of view.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m sorry, but—–

Posted on by
8

This is going to sound cruel.

Awful.

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

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

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

She is a vaccine-denier.

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

But I’m not sorry she got sick.

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

But she asked for it.

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

She lost.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s awful to feel these conflicting emotions.

It’s cruel.

I’m sorry, but—–

Racing: Coming from Behind

Posted on by
Reply

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Humanitarian

Posted on by
Reply

(We admire those we call “humanitarians,” but they’re just being human. That’s something all of us can be. Dr. Frank Crane wrote 106 years ago about what it takes to be a human-itarian—-)

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE JUST HUMAN?

It means to love folks; to be drawn instinctively to any human being; to gaze on the face of every passer – by with curiosity; to feel the heart warm a little even when looking at an old portrait in a book of one who lived five hundred years ago; to have a sense of uneasiness in    solitude, so that one wants to hunt up the sewing maid or the janitor for a bit of talk  to find pleasure in watching from the window the people in the street; to have every man and woman tempt to acquaintanceship; to see in every room, where people live, something to pique the      imagination; to follow with the eyes every schoolboy and wonder what home he comes from, what companionship he goes to, and what dreams occupy his soul; to feel awe at every old house, deserted and desolate, because human laughter has rung there; to reverence every church because men have worshipped there; to feel a touch upon the soul at the sight of a name carved on a tree, because human feeling is traced there; to hate war, because it means the extermination of men and the spoiling of men’s handiwork; to love human qualities in birds, beasts and things, as the fidelity of the dog, the playfulness and affection of the cat, the whimsicality of the parrot, the docility of the horse and cow, the water that babbles, the fire that talks and dances, the wind that sobs.

It means to be touched with pity at all human misfortune; to have a pang shoot through you when another’s finger is crushed; to shed tears when another’s heart is broken; to feel saddened at the thought of the many lives that are dull and hopeless; to take in one’s own mouth the misery of the multitude; to be shattered and rocked in the depths of the soul at the sight of a prison or a madhouse; to seek in one’s least words and ways to cheer and help any human being one may meet; to smile against the grain for another’s sake; to have an unconquerable aversion to causing pain, or even embarrassment; to avoid drawing attention to one’s own success before the unsuccessful, to one’s own talent before the ungifted, to one’s own health or beauty before the  diseased or ugly; to be insincere rather than unfeeling, so that one pretends mightily to enjoy the box of sweets a little child has given, though one inwardly detests them; to spare the feelings of   the washerwoman as readily as the feelings of the banker; to seek to set any one at ease who       approaches with shyness; when one asks the road to go with him a little way; to treat with respect all who wish to become acquainted; to be gracious even when in a surly mood; to listen patiently and interestedly to the egotist, the domineering and the opinionated, and to encourage the hesitant and diffident; to try to find some points upon which we can agree with every one; to shun all conflicts and seek all fellowships; to take some part in movements for the protection of   the weak, so that one helps do something in an organized way for the rights of children, of laborers, of criminals, of the crippled and the defective, of the common citizen against systematic plans to prey upon him.

To respect every human being and to despise none; to shrink from spoiling any man’s ideal or hope; to shun power and control over people and seek to serve and help people; to value a human soul above all moralities, religions or laws; and to esteem life greater than all institutions.

This it is to be just human.

Bicentennial

Posted on by
Reply

A big weekend is ahead as Missourians celebrates its bicentennial—two-hundred years since President Monroe signed the proclamation making Missouri the nation’s 34th state, the second state west of the Mississippi.

But if all we do is look back, we’re ignoring a responsibility we have for creating the state that will celebrate its TRIcentennial.

The Maori people of New Zealand have an ancient proverb: Ka mua, Ka muri that translates into “walking backward into the future.”

That is what our bicentennial is about—walking into a future we cannot see while looking back on the historic and the familiar things that shaped the present, knowing that we have changed as a people during this journey and that our descendants will be a changed people, too.

Some who do not understand how different we are fear who or what our next generations will be—and out of that fear are making what surely will become futile efforts to confine that future to present, or even past, standards that often are not based on history but are based on the myths of history.

We cannot stop time and if we are realistic about our future as a people, we must recognized that those who gather to celebrate our state’s TRIcentennial in 2121 will be different in appearance, social relationships, political references and in a multitude of other ways we cannot anticipate no matter how hard we might resist.

We are honoring those first settlers of mid-Missouri. But the historical record shows how different from us they were.  We know the names of the men but it is harder to learn the names of their wives and even more difficult to learn the names of the slaves they brought with them. We know they were people of hope, of ambition, and hard work, qualities necessary to survive in a world where fire was an essential ingredient of life. We live in a world where fire is a disaster at worst and a mostly decorative feature of a modern living room at best.

In our world, our homes and even the furniture in them are not products of our own hands. We travel farther in an hour than they sometimes traveled in a week, more in a day than some of them traveled in their lives.

They were not the first Missourians.  In Montgomery County’s Graham Cave State Park, evidence has been found of human habitation 10,000 years ago, long before the Osage populated much of Missouri—and other sites in Missouri date back farther than that.

We are observing 200 years in a place inhabited for thousands of years. We should honor the memories of the ancient ones, too.

We celebrate the bicentennial of man-made boundaries that define where we are and a history that tells us who we have become. But if we look only back on what was and became what is, we are making a serious mistake.  Walking backwards into the future endangers those who will be that future.

Our responsibility is to turn and face that future, respectful of the past but unafraid of the changes that our descendants will make because they must remain, as the people of 200 years ago were, people of hope.

What we do today—what we ARE today—lays the foundation for the state and nation our grandchildren’s grandchildren will inhabit.

So the Missouri bicentennial gives us some choices to make.  Will we continue to follow the trails our ancestors established through extraordinary effort and the  inalienable truths and hope that they brought with them……or will we follow trails of fiction and fear too easily established these days, and too easy to blindly follow?

Will we be a people fearful of one another, often victims of those who would generate fear among us for their own purposes or  power…..or will we be a people who recognize there is nothing wrong with a different heritage, a different color, a different outlook on identity, a different faith?

Will we be people spooked into division, derision, and disrespect….or will we be a people of thought, who seek understanding rather than hostility, people who respect knowledge, and who trust our neighbors regardless of their differences from us?

Will we be the kind of people who choose leaders who  DEmand blind allegiance or the kind of people with wide-open eyes and minds who choose leaders who COmmand respect?

What kind of people are we going to be as we lay the foundation for the kind of people we want our grandchildren’s grandchildren to be?

A hundred years from now, our grandchildren’s grandchildren will gather around the then-weathered monuments we have put up to honor the bicentennial.

What kind of people—in what kind of counties, state, and nation—do we want to have gathered around those monument in 2121?

Our generations will take those first steps on the new trail that stretches before us—the steps that will determine what kind of people and what kind of nation will be here in 100 years. We cannot take those steps by walking backward into the future. We must be unafraid to recognize our grandchildren’s grandchildren will not be like us.  We have to lay a foundation that allows them to be better than us.

We have to create a trail that is broad enough for all and grows broader as it advances. We have to create a trail that is not darkened by division, derision, and disrespect but is brightened by intelligence, independence, and acceptance.

And we must begin building a foundation strong enough to support a  greater nation than we are today.

So let our celebration of the past be brief.  Let our steps today be steps that those celebrating the TRI-centennial of our Missouri will be as grateful to us for taking—as we are for the steps taken by those who were here first.

We will honor the yesterday by the honorable steps we take today into tomorrow.

(The State Historical Society of Missouri was designated by the Missouri General Assembly to be the lead organization for planning the bicentennial. Coordinator Michael Sweeney has worked with every county to plan some event or project celebrating the event. You can learn more about what’s happening statewide or in your area at https://shsmo.org/missouri-2021.)

Racing : Crossing over

Posted on by
Reply

Both of the major auto racing bodies won’t return to the track until NBC has time for something other than the Olympics. But that doesn’t mean wheels have not been turning. Several drivers from both bodies are looking the next steps in their careers.

Trackhouse Racing co-owner Justin Marks (Trackhouse made headlines a few weeks ago by buying Chip Ganassi’s NASCAR operation) doesn’t seem to lack ambition. A few days ago he told Sirius XM’s Dave Moody he’s interested in fielding a car in the Indianapolis 500.  “I don’t think there’s anything that’s off the table.” He says he’s already had some discussions about how to do that.

Former NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson, who’s been racing on INDYCAR road courses this year, will see how he likes driving one of those cars on an oval later this month, perhaps at Homestead-Miami Speedway. He’d love to drive in the Indianapolis 500 next year. He says he might not run the full INDYCAR schedule next year if the overall test goes well. He’d use the time to prepare for the 500. The last NASCAR driver to run the 500 was Kurt Busch, who finished sixth in 2014.  Busch is still active on the NASCAR circuit although the sale of the Ganassi operation has left him unsure of what seat he’ll be in next year.

Another driver seeing what it’s like to turn laps only turning left is Romain Grosjean, who moved to INDYCAR from Formula 1 this year.  He ran 168 laps at Worldwide Technology Raceway, across the river from St. Louis, a few days ago and learned oval racing is harder than it might seem. “Everyone who thinks it’s easy to run ovals is absolutely mistaken,” he said afterwards, also admitting he enjoyed the experience.  He was about a half-second of the day’s fast time on the 1.25-mile track posted by oval veteran Colton Herta.

Ed Carpenter is courting F1 driver Nico Hulkenberg but the discussions are in the very preliminary stage.  Hulkenberg is a test driver for Aston Martin. He’s 33, a veteran of 179 starts but has never had a podium finish. His last full season was 2019 when he drove for Renault. This isn’t Hulkenberg’s first day with INDYCAR.  He talked with Ganassi when he saw himself being dropped by Renault and maintains an interest in INDYCAR.  He seems to be a fit for Ed Carpenter Racing because Carpenter runs only on the ovals. This year, Conor Daly has driven the car on road courses. Carpenter tells Racer he thinks Hulkenberg is interested at least in running an INDYCAR test.

And finally—The BC39 midget race on the quarter-mile infield dirt track at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is Thursday, August 19.  Crossing over from 3700-pound NASCAR vehicles to run midgets on dirt will be defending NASCAR champ Chase Elliott, who has run less than a handful of midget race before, and Conor Daly, a regular INDYCAR driver who has competed in the first two BC39 races and has midget experience beyond that.

NASCAR and INDYCAR return to action next Sunday. NASCAR is on the road course at Watkins Glen. INDYCAR races on the streets of Nashville.

(FORMULA 1)—A surprise winner at the Grand Prix of Hungary last weekend—Estaban Ocon, driving for Alpine-Renault, got his first F1victory but chaos during and after the race altered the final finish and the points standings.

Sebastian Vettel, driving for Aston Martin, finished second but was disqualified when race officials could not take a required fuel sample from his car. His team is appealing the ruling.

The DQ moved Lewis Hamilton to second place and expanded his points lead to eight over Max Verstappen.

The chaos began on the first turn of the first lap—a six-car mash-up triggered when Hamilton teammate Valtteri Botas late-braked and rear-ended Lando Norris who hit Verstappen. Verstappen’s damaged car was repaired during the red-flag period caused by the crash but he was able to climb back only to ninth.

F1 takes its usual summer break for most of August. Its next race Will be August 29, the Belgian Grand Prix.

(ROBIN)—A different kind of “crossing over” is facing one of the sport’s greatest reporters.  A lot of racing fans have seen Robin Miller on various racing television shows or doing pit-walks before races on television.  He’s been one of the greats in reporting on INDYCAR for decades.  Robin is dealing with cancer and leukemia and has penned a sort of farewell for Racer magazine, where he’s been a columnist for about ten years. Before that he covered racing for the Indianapolis Star for more than thirty years.

A couple of years ago, several past winners of the Indianapolis 500 gathered in the Media Center to honor Miller for 50 years of covering the Speedway. Among them where two of his favorites: Mario Andretti and A. J. Foyt.

This is part of what he has written for readers of Racer:

Facing your mortality isn’t something to think about every day or dwell on, because you’re alive and death isn’t in your daily mindset.

But when cancer and leukemia decide to gang up on you then everything changes, and you are suddenly lining up in a heat race with The Grim Reaper. Might be a 50-lapper, could be an enduro or you might get lucky and run for a year or two.

My situation is pretty cut and dried. There is no cure for my illness but it can be treated, and I’ve spent lots of hours at the clinic in Greenwood, Indiana with an awesome staff of doctors and nurses.

The outpouring of good wishes, prayers, positive thoughts and support from RACER nation is beyond humbling. I never dreamed that a guy who writes stories about race drivers could impact people’s lives and instill so much passion. I’ve had the greatest life anyone can imagine, and I’ve been lucky enough to share it with the fans.

Jim Hurtubise befriends me when I’m 17 and stealing beer for him at sprint car races, I’m stooging on his Indy 500 crew in 1968, then I’m covering USAC and IndyCar by 1969 for The Indianapolis Star, I’m working on Bill Finley’s pit crew by 1971 and driving him crazy by 1972, I’ve got a Formula Ford from Andy Granatelli thanks to my friendship with Art Pollard. I’m writing a weekly column about USAC by 1974 and a year later I’ve become the fourth Bettenhausen brother because I bought Merle’s midget…

. It was a great time, pounding up and down the highway with Timmy Coffeen, Bobby Grim Jr. and Tony Lee Bettenhausen. We didn’t have any money, but damn what an experience as we ran Little Springfield, Terre Haute, Kokomo, Eldora and some bullrings that were pretty sketchy but always an adventure.

Yet it was my job that gave me such an entrée into IndyCar history and such an education.

I idolized Herk, Parnelli, A.J., Rutherford, Mario, Gurney, the Unsers and Johncock and by the mid-1970s I was pals with all of them and it was the golden age of racing for my money. They were the modern-day gladiators and revered universally…

I almost died two weeks ago with a nasty infection and fever but my little sister, her best friend and a neighbor saved my life and rushed me to the hospital where three nurses also came to my rescue. I’ve put on 10 pounds and got my appetite back after three months, and my goal is to get to the triple-header at the Brickyard next month.

But I have to tell you about the amazing people who have stepped up with generosity that’s immeasurable.

Randy Bernard sent my sister an American Express gold card and said I wasn’t allowed to pay anything in the way of bills. Indianapolis Colts owner Jimmy Irsay did something that can’t even be imagined, but showed how big his heart is and it’s beyond humbling. Ditto for 1970 Indiana Mr. Basketball David Shepherd, whose generosity is off the chart. A.J. has called several times asking if I needed financial help and The Gas Man (Tom Sneva) has offered whatever I need. My best buds Steve Shunck, Larry Schmalfeldt, Feeno, Billy Shepherd, Davey Shep, Ralf Frey, Billy Benner, David Benner, Larry Walker, Bob Grim, John Mandlebaum, Al Freedman and Monk Palmore bring me lunch, dinner and hours of great conversation and they’ve rebuilt my condo, installed an electric staircase, built my sister a bed and kept me company daily. Nobody has more good friends than I do and I’m so… the word “lucky” isn’t appropriate. It’s beyond comprehension.

And my sister Diane has been here three months and I cannot begin to explain what an angel she’s been. I’d be lost without her mothering and nursing skills, along with her best friends Terri, Susie and Riney.

I don’t know what the future holds, but I’m at peace with whatever happens, be it a year or six months or six weeks or six hours. My plan is to move to Phoenix later this year because I want to watch the nephews and niece grow up and just peacefully pass on surrounded by my family, whenever it’s time…

But he says his first goal is to make it to the INDYCAR/NASCAR tripleheader at the Speedway later this month.

(Photo Credits: Grosjean–Chris Owens, IMS; Andretti, Miller, Foyt—Bob Priddy)