I'll Be Talking About Kentucky and Writing This Saturday

4/28/2015

Big Red, Claiborne Farm, Kentucky, May 7, 1989/ Photo, Fara Bushnell

I’ll be discussing my long relationship with Kentucky this Saturday in my town, Port Washington, Long Island – at the Dolphin Bookshop right after 3 PM.

Mostly I’ll be talking about how a few years of living in Kentucky gave me enough material to fill my head and my books and my articles forever.

I doubt I’ll get to all the stories, so let me tell how this photo with Secretariat came to be taken:

It started on May 6, 1989, when Sunday Silence won the Derby. At the media party late that night, a friend offered a tour of Stone Farm, where Sunday Silence’s sire Halo lived.

Oh, and on the way back up Winchester Road we could stop at Claiborne Farm to see Secretariat.

I am not a racing guy, never bet, have no clue who is running in the Derby on Saturday, but when I covered the Derby, I could learn the new cast of characters. Mostly, I loved the mystique of the Derby that makes Kentucky so different. I get misty when everybody stands and sings “My Old Kentucky Home.” I love the John Prine version:

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

Plus, nobody passes up a chance to see Secretariat.

First, we stopped at Stone Farm and visited Halo’s stall. I moved close to the wooden slats, only to feel the strong, insistent nudge of the groom, Handsome Sam Ransom, moving me back.

“He bite your head off,” Handsome Sam said.

The other horse people nodded. Mean SOB. I didn’t give Handsome Sam enough credit in my column that week:

http://www.nytimes.com/1989/05/14/sports/sports-of-the-times-a-visit-to-the-father-of-champions.html

We paid homage to Halo and his genes from a safe distance, then headed to Claiborne Farm. My guide, Fara Bushnell, who had some thoroughbred business with a couple of English buyers, handed me a couple of sugar cubes. Not supposed to feed the horses, she said, but….

We walked over to the fence, alongside a low hill of lush Kentucky bluegrass. I put a sugar cube on my palm. The hillside began to shake, better than an earthquake -- a 19-year-old, reddish of color, with a white patch on his nose.

Big Red lumbered over. He knew the drill. A wet nose nuzzled my palm, taking his present.Then he stood still, allowing me to touch his swaybacked side. My friend snapped the photo. Big Red could go now.

I never saw him run in person, but I have written about him dozens of times since, whenever some interloper tries to win the Triple Crown. I cannot tell you who the greatest baseball player or basketball player was, but I will tell you that nobody came close to Secretariat, the way he won the Derby, the Preakness, the Belmont.

Five months after my visit, Secretariat was put down lovingly at Claiborne Farm. Enough was enough. They said the earth shook when he went down. The great Bill Nack wrote an homage to him that you really ought to read:

http://www.si.com/longform/belmont/index.html

Big Red is only one reason I revel in the legends of Kentucky – the miners, the politicians, the hard-shell county judges, the singers, the farmers, the complicated world of Louisville, the charming madam and collector of majolica in Bowling Green, Pauline Tabor.

Kentucky was endlessly fascinating. (Don’t judge it by McConnell and Paul.) I’ll talk more at the Dolphin Bookshop, down near the scenic Town Dock in Port Washington, this Saturday. Hope to see you there.

Loretta Is From Further East in Kentucky

Edwin W. Martin

4/29/2015 10:33:06 am

Terrific story and wonderful links. Also quite Lincolnesque! "The Sun Shines bright..."

George Vecsey

4/29/2015 12:38:59 pm

Ed, it's a nice version. Prine spent time in Western KY as a kid.
You know the story about Foster's lyrics -- he wrote it in 1852 as "the darkies are gay" and only 136 years later the KY legislature officially changed the state song to "the people are gay." Prine sings, "the old folks are gay," which I think sounds better. Folk singers have better ears than politicians, anytime.
Best, GV

Ed Martin

4/29/2015 03:50:47 pm

When I worked in Washington, I had to testify before the House Appropriation Committee for Health, Education,etc. which was chaired in the mid 70's by William Natcher of KY. Mr. Natcher was quite reserved, polite, serious, a kind of southern or Appalchian gentlemen.
I read one day in Roll Call, (Hill paper), that he had spent only $10.00 on his most recent winning campaign for re-election. I happened to pass him in the hall one day, and presuming a bit, I congratulated him, and told him I had been going to contribute $1.00 for his campaign, but thought owning 10 percent of a Congressman might be too much. He looked at me seriously and said, "You would have owned 100 percent--it was only $1.00 my filing fee." Then he smiled.

George Vecsey

4/30/2015 12:49:12 am

Natcher was from Bowling Green and Western Kentucky Univ -- the home base of the aforementioned Pauline Tabor, the majolica-collecting madam I met. (That part of the state is far from the eastern mountains.)
The KY congressman I knew best was Carl D. Perkins, who presided over various coal-mine disaster hearings. He was always referring to the federal "raggulitions." Now that's Appalachian. GV

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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

I'll Be Talking About Kentucky and Writing This Saturday

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