Sunday, May 7, 2023
In bed at 9:30, up at 6:30, 5(?) pss, with strange dream of being on a bus with my young children and being bothered by hooligans, fighting back and throwing the hooligans' 'swag' all over the bus,. 55℉ already, expected high of 71℉, wind WSW at 6 mph, 4 to 8 mph during the day, gusts up to 19. 0.15" of rain overnight, thunderstorm expected around 4 pm. The sun rose at 5:05, sunset at 7:59, 14+22.
California panel recommends direct cash reparations payments to Blacks. It's hard to imagine a public policy proposal that is more likely to inflame and energize the Republican/MAGA/White Nationalist segment of America. That the pernicious effects of slavery and Jim Crow and persistent discrimination continue today is impossible to realistically deny. "The median wealth of Black households in the United States is $24,100, compared with $188,200 for white households, according to the most recent Federal Reserve Board Survey of Consumer Finances. In California, a recent report from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found for every $1 earned by white families, Black families earn 60 cents — the result of disparities in, among other things, education, and discrimination in the labor market." All one need do is to look at the housing patterns in most American cities today, the crime and prison statistics, educational statistics, etc. I have witnessed these effects for most of the last 80 years, my entire life, starting with growing up on the South Side of Chicago in the years of block-busting, overnight neighborhood shifts from all White to all Black. I see it every time I drive down to The Repairers of the Breach to drop off donations for the homeless, mostly Blacks. I see it every day in my almost all White neighborhood where I am a 'limousine liberal,' in my shopping habits in almost all White Ozaukee County, etc. I've long thought some form of reparation is morally justifiable, indeed morally required, but the harder issue is whether and to what extent reparations would require direct cash payments rather than social and economic programs designed to raise dramatically the social and economic status of Blacks in America. In any event, what is clear is that today any program that is race-based and targetted on benefitting minority people, especially Blacks, is foredoomed to failure among the MAGA and Republican crowds. "Nationwide, opinions on reparations are sharply divided by race. Last fall, a survey from the Pew Research Center found that 77 percent of Black Americans say the descendants of people enslaved in the United States should be repaid in some way, while 18 percent of white Americans say the same. Democrats were even split on the issue, with 49 percent opposed and 48 percent in support. Other polls on the issue have found similar splits." Alas.
WaPo - Dark week at Churchill Downs spawns questions about horse racing’s future; The old days of horse racing are gone, which was easy to see in the aftermath of a traumatic week at the Kentucky Derby. "LOUISVILLE — When the chief veterinarian from the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission visited Barn 39 at Churchill Downs Saturday morning, he did so in the milieu of May 2023. The old days had gone. The nation’s sensibilities about animals had changed at least somewhat. A sport with 1.2 horse deaths per 100,000 entries in 2022, down by almost half since 2009 while still exceeding that of other lands, reeled in the bizarre nightmare of a venerable track on the biggest stage, with five horses dying in the previous nine days ahead of two more fallen later Saturday. . . The scratching of Kentucky Derby favorite Forte, about 10 hours before post time, owed to a bruised right foot, the kind of ailment shy of injury which very well might not have forestalled a run 50, 25, 10 or even five years ago. It happened after Forte had galloped and jogged under observation. . . . He hadn’t scratched, he’d gotten scratched, with Forte the fifth horse since midday Thursday to be out — three of those scratched and two getting scratched. That’s counting Lord Miles, who exited Thursday late afternoon with Churchill Downs’s indefinite suspension of his trainer, Saffie Joseph Jr., after two of Joseph’s horses died."
For a few years, Geri and I drove from Wisconsin to Arlington Heights, IL to spend a day watching thoroughbred horse racing at beautiful Arlington Park Racetrack. There were typically 10 races each day and we each allowed ourselves $20 for betting, $2 apiece for each race, or more if we opted out of betting on any particular race, saving that $2 for betting $4 on another race. We had a scientific method to our betting, to wit, we usually bet based on the horses' names. If a horse's name appealed to us, we would bet on that horse. We would bet our $2 usually 'across the board', win, place, or show. This scientific method of wagering guaranteed that we would never lose more than $20 on our day at the races. It also usually guaranteed that if one of our name-based picks ever managed to win, place, or show, our winnings would be small and would only serve to reduce our day's losses to $20 minus the take from our (usually) one winner.
My favorite activity at the racetrack was not the races themselves or the betting, but rather spending time at the paddock where the horses were saddled and mounted by the jockeys. The horses are magnificent animals, beautiful. I enjoyed seeing them up close and watching them led through the tunnel onto the track before each race.
We stopped going to Arlington as I learned more about the realities of thoroughbred racing and the toll it takes on those beautiful horses I admired. Horse owners, breeders, and trainers are celebrating that the number of horse deaths per 100,00 entries is "only' 1.25, down from 2.00 a few years ago. I wonder how we would feel if the number of baseball players who died, or were injured and had to be euthanized on the field, were 'only' 1.25 per 100,000 games or innings, or batters faced by pitchers, down from 2.00 per measuring unit. In addition to the deaths and injuries, there is the perennial problem of trainers doping horses with drugs of various sorts, and owners and trainers starting horses racing at young ages, before their bodies are mature enough to sustain the damage done by competitive racing. Thoroughbred racing is a cruel sport. In 2021, 366 thoroughbreds suffered fatal injuries while racing, 33 more than in 2020. Thoroughbred horses are a bit like professional sports franchises of all sorts, playthings of the very wealthy. In the case of some of the sports, notably thoroughbred racing, professional boxing, and professional football, the ones who pay the price for the owners jollies are the horses, the boxers, and the football players while the owners enjoy the show.
Dystopic States of America. This morning's NYT: 'A gunman opened fire at a crowded mall outside Dallas on Saturday, killing at least eight people and injuring at least seven before a police officer killed him, the authorities said, turning a busy afternoon of shopping into a chaotic and tragic scene. The ages of the injured ranged from 5 to 61. . . . According to the Gun Violence Archive, a database of shootings in the United States, there have been 199 “mass shootings,” which it defines as the shooting of at least four people, in 2023. [This on only the 177th day of the year.] There were a particularly deadly spate of large-scale shootings this past week. . . Kaleo Palakiko, 36, was shopping with his parents for an upcoming vacation when they saw people running outside. “It was just kind of chaotic for a second. Then when someone said, ‘shooter,’ we all ran to the back of the store,” Mr. Palakiko said. “As Americans, we’re used to this, because everyone knew exactly what to do.” . . . Representative Keith Self, a Republican who represents Allen, Texas, said on CNN that critics who are calling for more than “thoughts and prayers” after Saturday’s shooting “don’t believe in almighty God, who is absolutely in control of our lives.” Instead, he said, the country’s lack of “mental health institutions” is to blame."
USA! DSA! USA! DSA!
Chauffeur work. I drove Peter to his job at the Wisconsin Athletic Club for his 1 p.m. - 3 p.m. shift. I noticed he has a start on a mustache at age 16. Made me wonder when I started shaving'; no recollection. I do remember the old, heavy Gillette razors though and Gillette Blue Blades
My heart leaps up. Looking through my bathroom window I saw a pair of beautiful mourning doves, one in front of the other, walking in their distinctive mourning dove way, beneath the bottle brush buckeye shrub.
My Heart Leaps Up
William Wordsworth - 1770-1850
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
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