Hurricane Watch Block Party

As Craig attends to his Southern outpost and care of loved ones, you are all invited to post, pass along news, or just crank up the music machine until the excitement abates enough for Craig to return.

A Horse To Remember

By Jamie44, a Trail Mix Contributor

Observing Man o’ War centennial at Kentucky Derby 143

I will let you all read the whole article about this magnificent animal, but here is the opening paragraph:

It’s a curious fact of American racing history that its greatest Thoroughbred legend, Man o’ War, didn’t contest the nation’s most celebrated race, the Kentucky Derby. But in 2017, as we celebrate the centennial of Man o’ War’s birth, the blood of “Big Red” pulses through the veins, however distantly, of every single horse in Derby 143.

Ladies of the Lilies

Rachel Alexander
Horse of the Year 2009

By Jamie44, a Trail Mix Contributor

On Friday, the ladies watching will wear pink hats and another beautiful lady will wear pink lilies.

The first running of the Kentucky Oaks was on May 19, 1875 when Churchill Downs was known as the Louisville Jockey Club. The race was founded by Meriwether Lewis Clark, Jr. (grandson of Lewis Clark of the Lewis & Clark expedition) along with the Kentucky Derby.

The Oaks and Derby are held on the first Friday and Saturday in May. The two races are the oldest continuously run races and the only horse races to be held at their original site since conception.

While the mint julep is the drink of the Derby, the Oaks official cocktail, the Oaks Lily, is much prettier and equally as potent.

1 1/4 oz. GREY GOOSE® Vodka
1 oz. Sweet and Sour Mix
1/4 oz. Triple Sec
3 oz. Cranberry Juice
Mix ingredients and pour into stemless wine glass with crushed ice and garnish with a blackberry and lemon wedge.

At time of writing I don’t have the post positions, but the fillies will be among these 17 horses.

Farrell

Miss Sky Warrior

Ever So Clever

Sailor’s Valentine

Paradise Woods

Salty

Abel Tasman

Daddys Lil Darling

Tequilita

Lockdown

Wicked Lick

Vexatious

Jordan’s Henny

Someday Soon

Mopotism

Torrent

Summer Luck

Cat In The Box

By Jamie, a Trail Mix Contributor

Copies of this wonderful story by Dana Michel of the well loved little grey cat are very rare and you can’t have mine. More than a half century ago, this was my daughter’s favorite book because it went up and down from the little cat in the box on a chair in the room in a house on a street with five trees in a city in a state in a country in the whole wide world and back down again to the box on a chair each trip going from the detailed & specific to faster and faster as adjectives and adverbs were omitted to speed the trip until finally you got to “Now Go To Sleep”. She loved it for its view of the safety of the little box to all the places outside her door.

Little gray cat inside a square box. Square box on top of a big striped chair. Chair in the room. Room in the house. House on the street. Street in the city. City in the state. State in the country. Country in the world. Oh, where in the world is my little gray cat?

In the world a country. In the country a state. In the state a city. In the city a street. On the street a house. In the house a room. In the room a chair. On the chair a box and inside that box is my little gray cat.

So how is this political? I’ve come to the conclusion that Conservatives, Libertarians in the US and the extreme right wing movements around the world, simply don’t have a clue how big anything is, and they really need to read this book. Their views barely reach beyond the limits of their family to the street and colors every issue from employment to taxes to refugees. They need to read this book. The Liberals, Democrats and general left wing see the big big picture with a wide wide world of variables, possibilities and interests, but forget that many of those issues can feel like an alteration of all that is normal in a culture and that the majority of people live and look at a street with five trees. They really need to read this book.

So where are you on the spectrum? How to adjust to a globe that in communications and movement is shrinking almost by the second? How does your view from the little box on the chair to the whole of the globe color your political attitudes?

Respite Needed

One of the things that make Trailmix a special place is that there are so many interests that even at our angriest and most contentious, there are references to family, music, books, and pastimes with a view to real lives that can’t be contained in 142 well pounded characters. Even with all of that, the longing for a gentler age must sometimes intrude. So let’s take a day off as far as humanly possible to just talk about family, friends, the joys found among pages and the notes stroked out of a willing instrument.

The image above is a gentleman from the early 19th century, roughly about the time England tried to take us back and failed. Fortunately Jane Austin took it upon herself to create a character who has made the world forget the War of 1812 completely ever since if you don’t think of the charming and party loving Dolly Madison fleeing the White House with Washington’s portrait. Meet the “Real” Mr. Darcy. When the 21st Century gets to be too much of a bad thing, I find visiting the 19th a respite.

What are you doing, reading, listening to, playing to get away from it all???