Second Fiddle

Hello World, Happy Memorial Day weekend! So here we have come at last at the unofficial start of summer - shaking off the icy shackles of winter and the unpredictable brickbats of spring - finally kicking off the long holiday weekend that ushers in the season of surf, sand, hammocks, watermelon, and lemonade. (It does no good to mention flip-flops, heaven knows, since people apparently wear them year-round nowadays, even in the northeast.) Of course, there will be parades galore, and it goes without saying, sales, sales, and more sales - plus beaches and parks opening of the season, to welcome winter-weary visitors on all sides. It also goes without saying that The Flag Brigade will be up to its usual standards of flying the colors upstairs and downstairs, and since this is one of the few years that Memorial Day (observed) coincides with the actual original Decoration Day (May 30) they will only be tasked with doing it once, rather than on 2 separate days. Whatever makes life easier for The Flag Brigade's last two poor addled brain cells (which I have renamed "Stars" and "Stripes" for the occasion) is a very good thing in my opinion, and that's not just a lot of rockets red glare, believe me. The previous Sunday was Pentecost, also known as "the birthday of the church" - although admittedly, without any presents, fireworks, green beer, folk dancing, parades, or betting to liven things up, it's a little hard to get all worked up about it. Respectable members of the congregation who remember (not like someone who shall remain nameless, but who looks suspiciously like me) are supposed to wear red in honor of the day, and which would have been a nice touch for the tiny choir of 5 ladies to look pigmentally matched - that is, if only I hadn't forgotten, and worn purple instead, alas. It was also a very special occasion as one of our venerable congregants, the estimable Sarah Gabrielson, turned 80 on that very day, and arrived with an entourage of family and friends to surround her with even more lovingkindness. When called upon to speak a few words of wisdom to the assembled throng upon reaching this exalted milestone, Miss Sarah modestly averred and insisted that she was actually 8 years old, since after all, everyone knows that zero doesn't mean anything. Now, that's the kind of birthday I can live with! It would take even more of a curmudgeon than yours truly to be less than delighted at the magnificent panoply of spring flowers everywhere, and the derisive snickering of our old friends the dinosaurs in The Peanut Gallery notwithstanding. It's finally gotten warm enough for early roses, and their pearly pink petals and heavenly fragrance are nothing if not a tonic for what ails you, I dare say. The star of Bethlehem is also cropping up in unexpected places, no doubt due to the interference of our juvenile delinquent squirrels, I shouldn't wonder, but no less welcome for all that. Speaking of temperatures, the Head Honcho at the temporary job where I'm working now wrote up an order for what she described as "2 pocket thermmadors" (and I can guarantee that your spell checker is not going to think much of that word, believe me) so I very helpfully (and under the circumstances, I use that term in the very loosest sense of the meaning, I promise you) improved upon it by rewriting the order as "2 digital pocket thermeters" - and which your poor beleaguered spell checker is not going to like a whole lot better, I can tell you that. In intellectual circles, this is what we call putting the illiterate foxes in charge of the alphabetical hen house, as it were, or going from the mis-spelling frying pan to the gibberish fire, and no good can come of it, Noah Webster. Well, it certainly can't be said that there's any grass growing on the evil spirit of Affirmed, who in spite of being dead lo these many years, burst out of the gate, so to speak, and eliminated any possibility of a potential Triple Crown right off the bat and in decisive fashion to boot. Although the Derby darling Nyquist took his post as the 3-5 favorite in the tiny field of 11 horses (among only 3 out of the original 20 who also ran in the Derby) this time around, it was Exaggerator avenging his 2nd place finish at Churchill Downs, and running away with it handily by 3-1/2 lengths in the muddy slop at Pimlico. Bill, who is our maven of horse-flesh around here, liked the gray dappled Cherry Wine, who acquitted himself nicely with a strong 2nd place finish in a virtual tie with Nyquist, while the other horses didn't show much stomach for the swampy conditions, and called it a day early on. (Personally, I feel the jockey's strategy was the undoing of Nyquist, by starting him out at full speed through most of the race, so the poor thing had nothing left at the end.) The biggest difference you notice between the jewel of "My Old Kentucky Home" and the flower of "Maryland, My Maryland," would immediately be the crowds. The Derby is a holiday in Kentucky, and everyone shows up to party in their fanciest clothes, or gaudiest costumes, with signature hats that are a spectacle unto themselves. A true son or daughter of The Bluegrass State would no more wear jeans to the racetrack than they would smear themselves with mud to go to the Presidential inauguration - and much less would the crack security forces at Churchill Downs even allow some under-dressed ruffian to cross their luxurious threshold to begin with. On the other hand (or hoof, as it may be) Pimlico is a bastion of egalitarian leisure, with shorts, sweats, tank tops, baseball caps, flip-flops, and leggings being the order of the day, and not a cocktail dress anywhere in sight. And so, once again, it should be interesting to see which 3-year-olds (besides Nyquist and Exaggerator who obviously have a score to settle) make the trek to Long Island for the Belmont Stakes on June 11, and see if one of them wins 2 out of 3, or if each of the 3 races is won by a different horse instead. And let's face it, if the nag in question remembered to wear red for Pentecost, well then, that would be a horse of a different color indeed. Elle