Daily Blues & Views

 They are using all the superlatives today.  His performance was breathtaking.  You don't see this very often.  This could be the horse of a lifetime.   After Flightline won the Malibu Stakes opening day at Santa Anita, the pundits and old-timers, the youthful and the addicted gamblers, the occasional fan, and the newbie were all stunned by his performance.   It wasn't merely good, it was off the charts.  This horse has the potential to be beyond something special. The veterans of the sport, who have seen it all before,  know it's way too early to get this excited.  Still, given the current state of affairs in this difficult, if not miserable world today, the possibility is there.  It's a good thing that Flightline's trainer, John Sadler, has handled horses of this caliber before.  That helps because patience with a capital P is often the key. These days, when I watch a horse race, it's at home and by myself.  I often...

 I knew the day would come.  But it conveniently was so easy to put off.  Yet, these days of pandemic boredom and too much time on my hands brought the inevitable forward.  I've got a job to do.  A very sensitive job, but one that very few care about.  Still, it's time. I have a very small family.  I could probably fit everyone in my living room.  Just one cousin on my mother's side, a sister, and nobody on my father's side.  Most are gone, and within 20-25 years half of those left will be too.   Yet their lives in photographs, ephemera, a few personal items, and miscellaneous objects remain.  To this, I can add my personal collection of journals, watercolor paintings, books, poems, photographs, memorabilia, and 30 years of classroom odds and ends from my teaching career.   What to do with this stuff?  That is the question.  It wouldn't be such a big deal if only there were a few more relatives or my own chi...

 My reading this week has taken me from the frying pan into the fire.  I'd better be careful with these fiery metaphors because it's easy to be misunderstood or offend when writing about grisly topics such as the Holocaust or lynchings in America. Nevertheless, I'll proceed.   Having just finished T he Tattooist of Auschwitz,   I then picked up the new biography of Malcolm X called The Dead are Rising , by Les Payne and his daughter Tamara Payne. Both, in their own ways, are love stories, and that ironic twist makes them even more fascinating to contrast.  The latter is also another kind of love story in that Tamara Payne finished the book after the untimely death of her father, Les. For Les Payne, this book was a labor of love that saw him through to the end of his days.  He felt so strongly about filling in the gaps from various media distortions over the years, that the book is meticulously researched, hence his near 30 year stretch working on ...