Under normal circumstances, the world would be turning its attention to a horse race in Kentucky on the first Saturday in May. This year, nothing is normal. In other years, people from all over the world – rich horse owners, trainers and jockeys, gamblers and hustlers, once-a-year swells, young party people – congregate on the south side of Louisville in a throbbing spectacle of energy, the polar opposite of social distancing (particularly in the mosh pit of the infield.) The ritual got to me. We lived in Kentucky for only two runnings of the Kentucky Derby, 1971 and 1972; I went to a Derby party of black professionals on the West End one year and my wife organized a Derby-night party the next year. I took a cab home from the track in 1972 and the driver charged me some horrendous figure and when I protested that I was a resident, not a tourist, he told me “Derby rates, Chief.” I think about that every first Saturday in May, back home on Long Island. When the grandkids were younger I would make them stand up for the playing of the official song of the Commonwealth of Kentucky: “My Old Kentucky Home,” and they shook their heads, as if to say, “What is it with Pop?” It’s the spectacle -- women sporting colorful broad-brimmed hats with gaudy flowers, as if they dressed that way every day. But this is one day a year – when Louisville emerges from the mists, like “Brigadoon” or Atlantis, some mystical civilization. Yes, I know it’s only a horse race – the prime American event in an industry tarnished by copious deaths of horses in recent years. And yes, I also know I am getting sentimental over a song – “My Old Kentucky Home,” by Stephen Foster, now scrubbed of overt words and nostalgia that seemed to glorify the very worst tradition of the South. There is a legend that Foster, from Pittsburgh, never set foot in Kentucky but as a boy he visited an uncle who was president of tiny Augusta College, in northeast Kentucky. Quite likely, Foster heard blacks worshipping – singing -- at a church in the little town. As an adult, Foster wrote a song about a slave who was sold down the Ohio River, saying farewell to all he knew. Although he used the worst words and stereotypes, Foster apparently meant the song as a criticism of slavery, taking his cue from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” that sensitized the North to the evils of slavery. Both came out in 1852. Long ago, Kentucky changed some of the lyrics about how happy the “darkies’” children were, rolling around on the cabin floor. Over recent decades, Kentucky maneuvered the song into the sentimental remembrance people have for their home towns, their home states, the goods and the bads. I was a news reporter based in Kentucky, with no illusions. When all the Derby celebrants in blue jeans or expensive frocks stand up for the state song, I always think about the coal-camp shacks in some gritty bottom land, or modest farmhouses in the western part of the state. The wind whistling across Long Island on Thursday reminded me of the tornado I covered in 1972 that impaled a boy on a tree branch while he slept in his own bed, only an hour southeast of Louisville, or the killer tornado in 1974 that blew through our old neighborhood on the East End, blowing the roof off the grade school our children had attended, before doing much worse just north in Xenia, Ohio. ("I knew it was coming," my wife said, now back home.) When they play the state song on the first Saturday in May, I think of Dec. 30, 1970, after the “shot man” had employed illegal outdoor sparking fuses in the gaseous mine, a violation of rules and common sense, causing 38 miners to be blown to Kingdom Come. For all that, I celebrate the spectacle on TV – don’t bet, don’t drink juleps or anything else, but I do love to watch. I don’t pay attention to racing now that I am retired, but I love the pre-race program when NBC educates instant Derby fans. Last year, alone with my wife, I stood for the anthem, then watched several thoroughbreds veer dangerously close to each other. “Hold on! I shouted at the gallant jockeys, inches from danger. Nobody fell, but I was not at all surprised when stewards took down the winner (can't remember the names) because he had been the most blatant factor in the near collision. Nothing will happen on Saturday. Nothing at all. Theoretically they have pushed the Derby back to Sept. 5, but I have major doubts we are going to see sports crowds any time soon. By-and-by hard times will come a-knocking at my door Then my old Kentucky home, goodnight * * * About Stephen Foster: https://www.wnyc.org/story/hidden-meaning-my-old-kentucky-home/ One of my greatest sports thrills came the day after the Derby in 1989: https://www.georgevecsey.com/home/ill-be-talking-about-kentucky-and-writing-this-saturday In honor of the Kentucky roots of John Prine, who passed from Covid-19 recently, here is his recording of “My Old Kentucky Home.”
John Zentay
4/30/2020 05:23:28 pm
George,
George
4/30/2020 05:57:33 pm
John: nice to hear from you. Derby is....different. Rites of spring.
Roy Edelsack
4/30/2020 05:55:20 pm
So true. There’s something about those cornball songs associated with annual events that gets to us despite our normal sense of sophistication. I’m thinking of Jim Nabors singing “Back Home Again in Indiana” before the Indy 500 or the greatest of them all, Bert Parks, belting out “Here she comes, Miss America!” Pure cheese but wonderful in its own special way.
George Vecsey
4/30/2020 09:50:15 pm
Roy, I had not thought about that -- well, there are going to be a lot of gaps, athletic and otherwise. If/When we get through, the record books will note: "No championship held -- Pandemic." Like the 1994 baseball World Series -- never happened "due to players' strike." Etc.
Randolph
4/30/2020 07:54:35 pm
George,
Jeffrey H. Geller
5/1/2020 08:36:07 pm
Hello George. What do you think about that virtual computer race for Derby Day? It will have a field of past winners and may settle debates in clubhouse circles.
Randolph
5/1/2020 09:08:32 pm
George and Jeffrey,
Jeffrey H. Geller
5/1/2020 10:24:27 pm
Hi Randolph. The turtle derby sounds like a winner. I wonder if ESPN has the broadcast rights to it? If the track is fast, it could be anyone*s race to win.
George
5/2/2020 10:32:21 am
Jeffrey Geller and Randolph: just read Joe Drape’s piece in NYT about virtual Derby. Who knew? Joe delivers his pick — boxed. Hint: i once petted the projected winner, wrote about it a few years ago.
Randolph
5/2/2020 11:19:28 am
George,
George
5/2/2020 02:22:32 pm
Jeffrey/Randolph: three things:
Randolph
5/2/2020 04:57:35 pm
George\Jeffrey,
George Vecsey
5/2/2020 07:36:37 pm
Randolph: I did not know of your Kentucky time.
Michael Green
5/2/2020 05:05:11 pm
Of course a wonderful essay (do you do any other kind of essay?), and I thought of something related and something unrelated.
George Vecsey
5/2/2020 07:50:19 pm
Dear Michael Green. How sweet. Thank you. Your friend was right. It is a major US event. Somebody used to send me a ball cap honoring the Derby winner -- I wore American Pharaoh today on my walk.
Gene Palumbo
5/2/2020 08:45:49 pm
Michael Green mentioned Rachel Toor's essay about Bob Welch. I found it, read it and liked it. In case you'd want to take a look: https://www.sbnation.com/longform/2014/6/13/5804568/bob-welch-death-remembrance 5/4/2020 11:38:45 am
Great comments.
Randolph
5/4/2020 08:04:12 pm
Alan, Comments are closed.
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QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html Categories
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