Local Little Leaguers do what local Professional Teams can't - Win a World Championship

Yea Chula Vista Blue Bombers!!!

Like Father, Like Son

He is no longer the "other Bird".

Summer Bird flew out from underneath the shadow of Kentucky Derby winner Mine That Bird Saturday with a surprisingly easy 3 1/2-length victory in the Grade 1, $1 million Travers Stakes over a sloppy Saratoga track in Saratoga Springs, New York.

Hold Me Back, the longest shot on the board at 17-1, rallied from last to be second, 1 1/2 lengths ahead of Quality Road, the 3-2 favorite. He was followed in the order of finish by Charitable Man, Warriors Reward, and Kensei. Our Edge, who set the pace for the opening half-mile, was eased.

The Travers victory coupled with his win in the Belmont Stakes in June should put Summer Bird atop the 3-year-old division heading into the fall.

"To me he is the champion colt right now," said winning trainer Tim Ice.

Considering Summer Bird didn't make his first start until March, that's quite an achievement.

"For him starting his first race in March, to be where he's at now could only show what a great horse he is," said Ice, who trains Summer Bird for Drs. Kalarikkal and Vilasini Jayaraman.

Summer Bird is the 30th Belmont Stakes winner to also capture the Travers. The last one to do it was Birdstone, who happens to be Summer Bird's sire.

When Birdstone won the Travers, he did it in a driving rainstorm that had developed just moments before the race began. Saturday, Summer Bird had to do it over an extremely sloppy track made that way by heavy rains Friday night and day-long showers on Saturday.

But from the time he left the gate, Summer Bird showed jockey Kent Desormeaux that the slop was not going to be an issue. Expecting to be next-to-last in the seven-horse field, Desormeaux found himself a relatively close fourth as Our Edge set the pace, stalked by Jim Dandy winner Kensei.

Summer Bird was four wide on the first turn and then moved up into a stalking third while remaining four wide down the backside. He was simply galloping through the sloppy surface while Our Edge ran a half-mile in 46.88 seconds. Kensei, took over from a tiring Our Edge at the half-mile pole while Desormeaux maintained a hold on Summer Bird.

"I could have went to the front at the seven-eighths pole," Desormeaux said. "For at least a half a mile I had him under restraint."

Leaving the five-sixteenths pole, Desormeaux decided to open the race up and began to ask Summer Bird for run. By the quarter pole he had a length lead, and turning for home he continued to widen his advantage.

"I thought, let's stretch them out from here and force them to keep up with me instead of allowing it to be a European style of race," Desormeaux said. "With that being said, I got to my breaking point where I thought it was time to go, which was the five-sixteenths. I let him go and he took off full of run."

Ice says people have been calling his horse the "other Bird" for a while, but he doesn't really care anymore.

"They can call him the other Bird if they want, but he's won the Belmont and the Travers," Ice said.

"Take it from there."

Summer Bird covered the 1 1/4 miles in 2:02.83 in the slop.

If you want to watch the race - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=styQg1knCas

Ginsberg and Drooker

Note: Adult language and themes present in the following poem

Howl*

By Allen Ginsberg

I.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after nightwith dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,

incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping towards poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,

Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,

who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,

who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,

who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,

a lost batallion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moonyacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,

whose intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement,

who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,

suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,

who wandered around and around at midnight in the railway yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,

who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night,

who studied Plotinus Poe St John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the universe instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,

who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels,

who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,

who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain,

who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,

who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving nothing behind but the shadow of dungarees and the larva and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago,

who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,

who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,

who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,

who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,

who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts,

who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,

who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love,

who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may, who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,

who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman's loom,

who copulated ecstatic and insatiate and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,

who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but were prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,

who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses' rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,

who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hungover with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,

who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open full of steamheat and opium,

who created great suicidal dramas on the appartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion,

who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of the Bowery,

who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,

who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,

who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,

who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,

who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,

who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for an Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade,

who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,

who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,

who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles,

who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch Birmingham jazz incarnation,

who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,

who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,

who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other's salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,

who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz,

who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,

who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,

who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturerson Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with the shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy,

and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia,

who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,

returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East,

Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,

with mother finally *****, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger on the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination—

ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you're really in the total animal soup of time—and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrating plane,

who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soulbetween 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deusto recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,

the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death,

and rose incarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America's naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio

with the absolute heart of the poem butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

II.

What sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!

Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgement! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!

Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovas! Moloch whose factories dream and choke in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!

Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch!

Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky!

Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisable suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs!

They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us!

Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstacies! gone down the American river!

Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!

Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years' animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time!

Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!

III.

Carl Solomon! I'm with you in Rockland

where you're madder than I am

I'm with you in Rockland where you must feel strange

I'm with you in Rockland where you imitate the shade of my mother

I'm with you in Rockland where you've murdered your twelve secretaries

I'm with you in Rockland where you laugh at this invisible humour

I'm with you in Rockland where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter

I'm with you in Rockland where your condition has become serious and is reported on the radio

I'm with you in Rockland where the faculties of the skull no longer admit the worms of the senses

I'm with you in Rockland where you drink the tea of the breasts of the spinsters of Utica

I'm with you in Rockland where you pun on the bodies of your nurses the harpies of the Bronx

I'm with you in Rockland where you scream in a straightjacket that you're losing the game of actual pingpong of the abyss

I'm with you in Rockland where you bang on the catatonic piano the soul is innocent and immortal it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse

I'm with you in Rockland where fifty more shocks will never return your soul to its body again from its pilgrimage to a cross in the void

I'm with you in Rockland where you accuse your doctors of insanity and plot the Hebrew socialist revolution against the fascist national Golgotha

I'm with you in Rockland where you will split the heavens of Long Island and resurrect your living human Jesus from the superhuman tomb

I'm with you in Rockland where there are twentyfive thousand mad comrades all together singing the final stanzas of the Internationale

I'm with you in Rockland where we hug and kiss the United States under our bedsheets the United States that coughs all night and won't let us sleep

I'm with you in Rockland where we wake up electrified out of the coma by our own souls' airplanes roaring over the roof they've come to drop angelic bombs the hospital illuminates itself imaginary walls collapse O skinny legions run outside O starry-spangled shock of mercy the eternal war is here O victory forget your underwear we're free

I'm with you in Rockland in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea-journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night.

*The piece shown is Blood on the Moon and was supposedly inspired by the Moloch portion of Ginsberg's poem. The artist is Eric Drooker.

Ferlinghetti and Segal

Constantly Risking Absurdity

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti*

Constantly risking absurdity

and death

whenever he performs

above the heads

of his audience

the poet like an acrobat

climbs on rime

to a high wire of his own making

and balancing on eyebeams

above a sea of faces

paces his way

to the other side of the day

performing entrachats

and sleight-of-foot tricks

and other high theatrics

and all without mistaking

any thing

for what it may not be

For he's the super realist

who must perforce perceive

taut truth

before the taking of each stance or step

in his supposed advance

toward that still higher perch

where Beauty stands and waits

with gravity

to start her death-defying leap

And he

a little charleychaplin man

who may or may not catch

her fair eternal form

spreadeagled in the empty air

of existence

* The piece shown is Circus Acrobats (1981) by George Segal and was recently gifted to the Princeton University Art Museum from the George and Helen Segal Foundation.

Swenson and Giacometti

The Tall Figures of Giacometti*
by May Swensen

We move by means of our mud bumps,
We bubble as do the dead but more slowly.

The products of excruciating purges
we are squeezed out thin hard and dry.

If we exude a stench it is petrified sainthood.
Our feet are large crude fused together

solid like anvils. Ugly as truth is ugly
we are meant to stand upright a long time

and shudder without motion
under the scintillating pins of light

that dart between our bodies

of pimpled mud and your eyes.

*Alberto Giacometti - Swiss sculptor, painter, and printmaker.

The piece shown is entitled City Square (1948)

Dove and Kahlo

Sonnet in Primary Colors
by Rita Dove

This is for the woman with one black wing
perched over her eyes: lovely Frida*, erect
among parrots, in the stern petticoats of the peasant,
who painted herself as a present –
wildflowers entwining the plaster corset
her spine resides in the romance of mirrors.

Each night she lay down in pain and rose
to her celluloid butterflies of her Beloved Dead,
Lenin and Marx and Stalin arrayed at the footstead.
And rose to her easel, the hundred dogs panting
like children along the graveled walks of the garden, Diego’s**
love a skull in the circular window
of the thumbprint searing her immutable brow.









*Frida Kahlo – Mexican painter. The piece shown is entitled Self Portrait with Monkey and Parrot (1938)
**Diego Rivera – Mexican artist, husband of Frida Kahlo

Ginsberg and Cėzanne

Cėzanne’s Ports
by Allen Ginsberg

In the foreground we see time and life
swept in a race
toward the left side of the picture
where shore meets shore.

But the meeting place
isn’t represented;
it doesn’t occur on the canvas.

For the other side of the bay
is Heaven and Eternity,
with a bleak white haze over it mountains.

And the immense water of L’Estaque* is a go-between
for minute rowboats.









*L’Estaque – Fishing village in France

where Paul Cėzanne, French Postimpressionist,

painted many of his views of the sea.

The piece shown is entitled L'Estaque (1839-1906)

Happy 40th Anniversary!

If you know anything at all about me you know that Santana runs through the very core and fabric of my life. So, of course, I have to show a few photos of him at Woodstock, which was pivotal and groundbreaking to/for his career.

Woodstock

1969 and 2009
Woodstock

Click on the link below (hit "watch" right under Carlos' picture), turn up your speakers and listen to Santana playing "Soul Sacrifice" at Woodstock (simply A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!). Santana's set (yes, the band did play more than just one song) is also regarded by those who know anything at all as THE highlight of the festival:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/flowinlikeanocean/3823407285/

Activism

From Dave Matthews web site:
"In Dave Matthews Band's continued effort to give back and support charities and socially conscious companies worldwide, they have forged a relationship with TOMS Shoes. TOMS Shoes was founded on a simple premise: With every pair you purchase, TOMS will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need. One for One. Since their beginning in May 2006, TOMS has given over 150,000 pairs of shoes to children in need through the purchases of caring customers. Because of their growing support, TOMS plans to give over 300,000 pairs of shoes to children in need around the world in 2009. Dave himself was so inspired by TOMS work that he got involved and has created his own design that we are now pleased to be offering in the official store. What easier way to get involved? Buy your pair of Dave Matthews designed TOMS today and you will not only be getting a great pair of shoes for yourself, but you'll be providing a pair to a child in need all in one easy step! Click here to find out more about TOMS Shoes. We are happy to be working with a great company like TOMS Shoes and excited to be able to offer these limited edition, vegan friendly shoes."





url to purchase either of the shoes shown above -
http://davematthewsband.shop.musictoday.com/Dept.aspx?cp=1_21609

Activism

Below are the urls for a couple of sites some of you may find interesting.

Architects of a New Dawn: when you bring up this website click on the video that says "What is Architects of a New Dawn?" - the video is impactful and Carlos shares some thoughts starting at 2:50 on the video (he says more throughout the 6:12 of the video).

http://www.architectsofanewdawn.com/

From the website :

"Architects of A New Dawn is a project, born from the dream and vision of Carlos Santana, to create a new global network, driven by extraordinary music and powerful media content.

It is designed to engage people of all walks of life to work together to create positive change in the global community where love can replace fear and where peace can replace conflict.

This is an invitation to join us and connect with other Architects literally from every part of the globe to find ways to effect change and transform our world together."

Milagro Foundation: Making a Difference in Children's Lives

http://www.milagrofoundation.org/

From the website:

"The Milagro Foundation is a publicly supported foundation established by Carlos Santana and his family in 1998.

Milagro benefits underserved & vulnerable children around the world by making grants to community based tax-exempt organizations that work with children in areas of education, health & the arts.

Milagro means “miracle”. The image of children as divine miracles of light and hope, even as gifts to our lives, is the meaning of the name.

With funds generated by concert ticket donations, individual and corporate donors, Milagro supports children and youth in the San Francisco Bay area, across the United States, and in countries around the world touched by the music of Santana."

My World This Week

With 2 days left before summer session ends this is the view from my desk. It's a vertiable paperpalooza!

Summer Session Countdown...

'Tis the last week of summer school so right now I'm experiencing the "joy" of listening to all the assorted (and creative) excuses from students as to why I should accept work that was due two-three weeks ago. It's such a predictable behavior as it happens at the same time each semester and, predictably, I feel like they're trying to engage me in an academic version of "Let's Make a Deal". However, I'm not Monty Hall and our classes take place at a college not the studios of ABC and NBC. So, although there are no deals to be had, their attempts at deal-making are quite entertaining and I do give them a Siskel and Ebert "thumbs up" for trying. Anyway, three more in-class days, tons of essays to grade, the computing and turning in of grades and then a two week respite (where the only things on my mind will be decompressing and a resort getaway) before the Fall semester begins with a sea of fresh, smiling faces.

Can You Say Chalk?

'Twas, by and large, a chalky week at the races. There were a few "medium paying" races on a couple of days but, alas (and alack), the phrase for the week was "chalk, chalk and more chalk". What's a longshot bettor to do? sigh....

Oh well, the morrow starts a new week - perhaps the horse gods will be kinder.

Listening to Waters

...As the heat mirages on the river in front of me danced with and through each other, I could feel patterns from my own life joining with them. It was here that I started this story, although, of course, at the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books. But I knew that a story had begun, perhaps long ago near the sound of water.

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs*.

I am haunted by waters. (Norman Maclean - A River Runs Through It)

*the word "theirs" refers to dead loved ones of the author.


We all have rivers, rocks, and words beneath the rocks that we should and need to listen to. Those words don't necessarily have to come from a family member. They can also come from someone who loves us or is loved by us. Nor does that person have to be dead - they can still be breathing and walking the planet. The important thing is to listen and pay attention to "the words under the rocks" for it is there that we sometimes get the most insight from and about those we love and are loved by.

Feeling Parched?

One way to stay cool on a hot Sunday...

Sotheby's to Sell Property from the Legendary Collections of Dr. Arthur M. Sackler

Krass und Mild (Dramatic and Mild), 1932 - Wassily Kandinsky

Personal note from me: anytime you have the opportunity to see any of Kandinsky's work do so - as fabulous as it looks on the page it is even more impressive in person.

Dr. Arthur M. Sackler was one of America's foremost collectors, whose passion for objects transcended any one collecting category or time period, featuring outstanding examples of ancient art of many cultures, as well as European sculpture, furniture, and paintings from the Renaissance to the modern era. Dr. Sackler's passion for collecting was matched only by his generosity, gifting objects and endowing galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Princeton and Columbia Universities, the Smithsonian, and the Royal Academy in London, in addition to establishing museums at Harvard and Beijing Universities.

Sotheby's November sales of Impressionist and Modern Art will include eleven works from Dr. Sackler's collections. Among those to be presented in the Evening Sale on November 4th is a monumental work by Wassily Kandinsky, Krass und Mild (Dramatic and Mild), one of the greatest Bauhaus-period works to have appeared at auction in years. (est. $6/8 million). Painted in May 1932, during Kandinsky's final months at the Bauhaus, the canvas is a visual symphony of geometry and color. The provocative title for this picture, also known as Drastic and Mild, evokes the powerful forces at play during the era in which it was created. Kandinsky painted this work in the spring of 1932, only months before the National Socialists closed the Bauhaus headquarters in Dessau. Krass und Mild was purchased by Dr. Sackler in Sotheby's historic sale of Fifty Paintings by Wassily Kandinsky from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation in 1964. The appearance of Krass und Mild on the market is particularly timely given the recent revival of interest in Kandinsky as a pivotal artist, evidenced by major shows in London, Paris and in New York this fall

Why I Don't Go on Opening Day

Opening Day attendance this year was the biggest in the track's history - it even surpassed the attendance set on the day in 1976 when Dare and Go beat Cigar in the Pacific Classic (this is Del Mar's big kahuna million dollar race). In 1976 the attendance was 44,181 - this year's Opening Day attendance was 44,907. However, just because I didn't subject myself to all the craziness that is known as "Opening Day" I still placed my bets. The track has "Early Bird Betting" wherein one can go to the track between 9 and 10 AM and make one's bets before the track opens at noon (gates open at 11:30 on the weekends). Opening Day usually results in chalky (the "chalk" is the favored betting choice) payoffs, due to part to the fact that a goodly portion of the people who come on Opening Day don't have a clue as to how to handicap the races and bet, resulting in screwed up odds. However, this year there were a few races that proved semi- profitable for long shots bettors such as me. Let's hope the remainder of the meet starts bringing in those long shots Del Mar is known for!

It's Finally Here - Christmas in July!!!

In the words of race announcer Trevor Denman - "... and away they go..."!

1 More Day....

My adrenaline is starting to gear up, my palms are starting to itch, my tummy is filling with butterflies and the Daily Racing Form is awaiting my attention for Opening Day handicapping. Only 1 day and about 6 1/2 hours until the first race. Yea, Yea, Yea and Hurray!

2 More Days...

British Museum to Show Revolution on Paper: Mexican Prints 1910-1960

Portrait of Emiliano Zapata. Angel Zamarripa. c.1953. Woodcut. Copyright Trustees of the British Museum. Reproduced by permission of the Sociedad Mexicana de Autores de las Artes Plasticas (SOMAAP)


LONDON.- The exhibition will be the first in Europe focusing on the great age of Mexican printmaking in the first half of the twentieth century.

Between 1910 and 1920 the country was convulsed by the first socialist revolution, from which emerged a strong left-wing government that laid great stress on art as a vehicle for promoting the values of the revolution. This led to a pioneering programme to cover the walls of public buildings with vast murals, and later to setting up print workshops to produce works for mass distribution and education. All the prints in the exhibition come from the British Museum's collection which has been compiled thanks to the generosity of James and Clare Kirkman, Dave and Reba Williams and The Art Fund.

Some of the finest of these prints were produced by the three great men of Mexican art of the period known as ‘los tres grandes’: Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. The best-known print is Rivera’s Emiliano Zapata and his horse which has achieved iconic status in twentieth century Mexican art. Other prints including Rivera’s portrait of Frida Kahlo, Siqueiros’ Dama Negra, Orozco’s The Masses, demonstrate the extraordinary breadth, imagination, and quality of the works shown. In addition to the Los Tres Grandes, many other artist were involved and rose to prominence, especially after the founding of the Taller del Gráfica Popular (TGP) in Mexico City in 1937. The range of material is fascinating: as well as single-sheet artists’ prints, there are large posters with designs in woodcut or lithography by these same artists, and illustrated books on many different themes. The exhibition will also include earlier works around the turn of the century by the popular printmaker, José Guadalupe Posada, who was adopted by the revolutionaries as the archetypal printmaker who worked for the people, and whose macabre dances of skeletons have always fascinated Europeans.

Printmakers in Mexico often belonged to groups, societies and movements which were underpinned by their commitment to politics. The earliest movement was Stridentism, an avant garde group which was launched 1921 and was similar to the Italian Futurist movement because it rejected the past. The Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP) was formed in 1937 by Luis Arenal, Leopoldo Méndez and Pablo O’Higgins as a graphic arts workshop which was influenced by communism. TGP members had access to printing equipment at the workshop and did not need to have artistic training. The collective produced prints for posters, flyers and portfolios which were printed on cheap paper. Their prints often supported the campaigns of trade and workers unions in Mexico. For example, Pablo O’Higgins and Alberto Beltrán collectively made a poster advertising the first Latin American Petrol Workers conference. The TGP was also particularly committed to the fight against international Fascism. Angel Bracho’s striking red and black poster, Victoria! (1945), which celebrates the allied victory over the Nazi’s in 1945, is a key example of the TGP’s anti-Fascist stance. Other printmakers addressed subjects such as corruption, capitalism and Mexican daily life in their prints.

In 1957, the TGP held a major exhibition at the Fine Arts Palace in Mexico City to celebrate its twentieth anniversary as a printmaking collective and its activity continues even today on a minor scale. Members of the TGP and other artists’ groups have published extensively in support of the visual arts. Other artists associated with the TGP went on to establish art schools, institutions or museums.



Portrait of Emiliano Zapata. Angel Zamarripa. c.1953. Woodcut. Copyright Trustees of the British Museum. Reproduced by permission of the Sociedad Mexicana de Autores de las Artes Plasticas (SOMAAP)

Feasting on the Fourth

Yes, I know it's been a while since the 4th of July. However, I was waiting for recipes and photos from others before I could complete this post. So, here's the deal - a friend, who just loves to cook for herself, her family, the neighborhood, the whole world(well, you get the idea - she LOVES to cook!) came up with a theme for our Pre-4th of July party - everyone had to pick a recipe from either the Food Network or Epicurious, take a photo of said recipe from whichever web site they chose (FW or Epi), make the dish and then bring both photo and dish to the party. Now, so there wouldn't be all hamburgers and nothing else, we had to send our recipe/photo to Leah. Well, I didn't know what I wanted to make and was chatting with my friend Kim who turned me on to Aaron's Potato Salad (thanks, Kim - the potato salad was loved by one and all!). Then, one of the people who was going to come but came down with the flu was supposed to make the baked beans so guess who got to make that as well? Yep, 'twas me. They too were delicious. Actually, everything was delicious! I'm not showing pictures of the chips as we all know what bags of chips look like. Drinks included soda, lemonade, peach ice tea, regular ice tea, Long Island ice tea (hey Kim, remember the crab crawl down the Del Mar cliffs...), beer, wine, cocktails and assorted coffees (the coffees accompanied the desserts).

The party didn't start until 6ish and, as you can see by the photos below, we had enough food for a third world nation. Surprisingly, though, amongst the main courses and side dishes there was not one leftover to be seen or had. There was, however, some cake and trifle left but I think that's because everyone was stuffed when the aforementioned was being served. By the time we were finished cooking and eating, a fabulous time was had by all.

Jack's Peach BBQ Beans

This recipe makes approximately 24 servings.

Ingredients:
8 strips bacon, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 large yellow onion, chopped
1 (#10 can, about 6 pounds and 10 ounces) baked beans (recommended: Bush's)
3 cups canned peach pie filling
1/2 cup barbecue sauce
2 tablespoons Jack's Old South BBQ Rub, recipe follows

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Heat a large skillet over medium heat. Add the bacon and cook, stirring, until somewhat crispy and its fat has rendered. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the bacon to a paper towel-lined plate to drain, leaving the fat in the skillet. Add the pepper and onion to the skillet and cook, stirring, until softened, about 6 minutes. Transfer the mixture to a large baking pan. Add the bacon, beans, pie filling, barbecue sauce, and rub to the pan. Mix to combine and bake, uncovered, until hot and bubbly, about 1 hour.

Jack's Old South BBQ Rub:
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sweet paprika
1/4 cup kosher salt
3 tablespoons black pepper
2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons onion powder
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon dried basil
Combine all ingredients and mix well.
Yield: 3/4 cup

Coffee Rubbed Cheeseburgers

Ingredients:

Coffee rub:
1 tablespoon freshly ground coffee
2 teaspoons (packed) golden brown sugar
2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

Burgers:
8 slices applewood-smoked bacon
1 pound ground chuck (preferably grass-fed)
1 pound ground sirloin (preferably grass-fed)
8 slices smoked provolone, smoked caciocavallo, or smoked Gouda cheese (about 8 ounces)
8 potato-bread hamburger Buns
8 slices red onion
8 slices tomato

Barbecue Sauce (yields about 1 1/3 cups):

1 tablespoon butter
1 garlic clove, minced
1 cup ketchup
1/3 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1/3 cup Worcestershire sauce
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
1 chipotle chile from canned chipotle chiles in adobo,* minced with seeds
1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne
Melt butter in medium saucepan over medium heat. Add garlic; stir 30 seconds. Stir in ketchup and all remaining ingredients. Bring to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low; simmer until reduced to 1 1/3 cups, stirring occasionally, about 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. do ahead Can be made 1 week ahead. Cool slightly, cover, and chill.

Directions:

For coffee rub: Mix all ingredients in small bowl. DO AHEAD: Can be made 1 week ahead. Store airtight at room temperature.
For burgers: Cook bacon in large skillet until crisp. Transfer to paper towels to drain. Break in half. Gently mix chuck and sirloin in large bowl. Form meat into 8 patties, each 3 1/2 to 4 inches in diameter and 1/3 to 1/2 inch thick. Using thumb, make slight indentation in center of each burger. DO AHEAD: Burgers and bacon can be prepared 8 hours ahead. Cover separately and chill.
Prepare barbecue (medium-high heat). Sprinkle 1 teaspoon coffee rub on top side of each burger. Place burgers, rub side down, on grill rack. Grill until slightly charred, about 4 minutes; turn.
Place 2 bacon slice halves atop each burger. Cook 3 minutes.
Top each with 1 cheese slice. Cover and cook until cheese melts, about 1 minute longer. Place burgers atop bottom halves of buns. Top with onion slices and tomato slices. Spoon dollop of Barbecue Sauce over. Cover with bun tops and serve, passing additional sauce alongside.

Aaron's Potato Salad

The recipe makes 4-6 servings so you'll need to adjust your measurements accordingly.

Ingredients:
3 large Yukon gold potatoes (about 1 1/4 pounds), peeled and cut into 1-inch cubes
3 large eggs
1/2 cup diced onion
1/2 cup diced celery
2 tablespoons sweet relish
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon hot sauce
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
1 cup mayonnaise
2 scallions, thinly sliced

Directions:
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the potatoes and cook until tender, about 15 minutes. Drain the potatoes and spread out on a sheet pan to cool. Meanwhile, bring a separate pot of water to a boil. Carefully add the eggs; cook for 12 minutes, then remove to a bowl of ice water to cool completely. Peel the eggs under cold running water, then roughly chop.
In a large bowl, combine the onion, celery, relish, Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, 1 teaspoon pepper and the mayonnaise. Fold in the potatoes, eggs and scallions. Adjust the seasoning to taste.

Dry Rub Baby Back Ribs

The recipe makes 3-4 servings so you'll need to adjust measurements accordingly.

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon paprika
1 1/2 teaspoons dark brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons finely grated orange zest
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
3/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, to taste
4 pounds baby back ribs, cut into 2-rib portions

Directions:
In a small bowl, stir together all ingredients except the ribs. Rub spice mixture all over the ribs. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate ribs for at least 2 hours or up to 12 hours.

Preheat the grill to medium heat.

Arrange the ribs on the barbeque and grill for 40 to 45 minutes, turning with tongs occasionally until meat is tender and crisp on the outside.

Oven-Fried Chicken

The recipe makes 6 servings so you'll need to adjust your measurements accordingly.

Ingredients:
2 chickens (3 pounds each), cut in 8 serving pieces
1 quart buttermilk
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon freshly ground black pepper
Vegetable oil or vegetable shortening

Directions:
Place the chicken pieces in a large bowl and pour the buttermilk over them. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Combine the flour, salt, and pepper in a large bowl. Take the chicken out of the buttermilk and coat each piece thoroughly with the flour mixture. Pour the oil into a large heavy-bottomed stockpot to a depth of 1-inch and heat to 360 degrees F on a thermometer.
Working in batches, carefully place several pieces of chicken in the oil and fry for about 3 minutes on each side until the coating is a light golden brown (it will continue to brown in the oven). Don't crowd the pieces. Remove the chicken from the oil and place each piece on a metal baking rack set on a sheet pan. Allow the oil to return to 360 degrees F before frying the next batch. When all the chicken is fried, bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until the chicken is no longer pink inside. Serve hot.

L.A. Burger

Directions:
Bobby's Perfect Patty
Shape 6 ounces of 80 percent lean ground beef chuck into a uniform patty, no more than 3/4 inch thick (don't overwork the meat). Make a depression in the center with your thumb so the burger won't bulge; the indent will rise as the patty cooks. Preheat a grill or cast-iron grill pan to high. Brush the burger with canola oil and season with salt and pepper. Grill until golden brown and slightly charred, turning once (7 minutes for medium-rare). Avoid pressing with a spatula! Add cheese for the last minute of cooking.

Cheese
Your pick: Monterey Jack is a California favorite, but Bobby loves this burger with cheddar, too.

Avocado Relish:
Avocado is one of Bobby's favorite ingredients. He mixes 2 chopped Hass avocados with 1/2 diced small onion, 1 minced jalapeno, the juice of 1 lime, 3 tablespoons chopped cilantro, and salt and pepper.

Watercress:
L.A. doesn't do iceberg lettuce, so Bobby tops off the burger with this peppery green instead.

Tomato:
One thick, juicy slice take the place of ketchup.

Chili Cheese Dogs

Ingredients:
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 pound lean ground beef
1 cup ketchup
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 tablespoon prepared yellow mustard
Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper
4 all beef hot dogs, about 1/2 pound
4 hot dog rolls
1/2 cup shredded Cheddar

Directions:
To make the chili: Heat a skillet over medium flame and add 2 tablespoons of olive oil. When the oil gets hazy, add the onion and cook, stirring, until they are soft and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the ground beef, breaking it up with the back of a spoon, and cook until nicely browned, about 10 minutes. Stir in the ketchup, chili powder, and mustard; simmer for 15 minutes until thick; season with salt and pepper.

For the hot dogs: While the chili is cooking: place a large grill pan on 2 burners over medium-high heat or preheat an outdoor gas or charcoal barbecue and get it very hot. Brush the grates with oil to keep the hot dogs from sticking. Parboil the dogs first before grilling: bring a pot of water to a boil and cook the hot dogs for about 5 minutes. Remove from the water and grill the hot dogs just long enough to give them grill marks. Brush the insides of the rolls with the remaining oil and place them face down on the grill until toasty. To serve, top each hot dog with the chili and some Cheddar cheese.

Watermelon/Cantaloupe Fruit Salad

Ingredients:
1 bunch fresh mint, chopped
1/4 cup lemon juice, from about 1 lemon
1/4 cup simple syrup, recipe follows
1/8 teaspoon amaretto
2 cups watermelon balls, from about half a watermelon
2 cups cantaloupe balls, from about 1 cantaloupe

Directions:
In a blender, combine mint, lemon juice, simple syrup, and amaretto. Blend until smooth.
In a large bowl, combine the watermelon and the cantaloupe. Add the vinaigrette and toss. Transfer to a serving bowl and serve.
Simple Syrup:
1/2 cup water
1 cup sugar
In a saucepan, combine water and sugar over medium heat. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes, until the sugar has dissolved. Take pan off heat and cool the syrup. Any extra cooled syrup can be saved in an airtight container in the refrigerator.
Yield: 1 cup

Red, White and Blue Trifle

Ingredients:
1 box red velvet cake mix, about 18 ounces (if you can't find red velvet cake use 1 box chocolate cake plus a bottle of red food coloring)
1 (16-ounce) tub whipped topping
2 pints blueberries
1 pint strawberries, tops removed

Directions:
Bake the red velvet cake mix according to package directions and allow to cool.
Using a serrated knife cut the red velvet cake into 1 inch square pieces and line the bottom of the trifle bowl with half of the cake squares.
Using a spatula, spread about a 2-inch layer of whipped topping on top of the cake squares.
Layer about 1 1/2 pints of the blueberries on top of whipped topping.
Layer the remaining cake pieces on top of the blueberries forming a second layer of cake.
Using a spatula, spread remaining whipped topping over the cakes pieces.
Decorate the perimeter with the strawberries; placing the strawberries cut side down. Sprinkle the remaining blueberries on top of the trifle inside the strawberry perimeter.

Flag Cake

This recipe yields about 20-24 pieces, depending on how you slice the pieces.

Ingredients:
18 tablespoons (2 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature
3 cups sugar
6 extra-large eggs at room temperature
1 cup sour cream at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
3 cups flour
1/3 cup cornstarch
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
For the icing:1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature
1 1/2 pounds cream cheese at room temperature
1 pound confectioners' sugar, sifted
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
To assemble:
2 half-pints blueberries
3 half-pints raspberries

Directions:
Heat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Butter and flour an 18 by 13 by 1 1/2-inch sheet pan.
Cream the butter and sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment on high speed, until light and fluffy. On medium speed, add the eggs, 2 at a time, then add the sour cream and vanilla. Scrape down the sides and stir until smooth.
Sift together the flour, cornstarch, salt, and baking soda in a bowl. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture to the butter mixture until just combined. Pour into the prepared pan. Smooth the top with a spatula. Bake in the center of the oven for 20 to 30 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean. Cool to room temperature.
For the icing, combine the butter, cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mixing just until smooth.
Spread three-fourths of the icing on the top of the cooled sheet cake. Outline the flag on the top of the cake with a toothpick. Fill the upper left corner with blueberries. Place 2 rows of raspberries across the top of the cake like a red stripe. Put the remaining icing in a pastry bag fitted with a star tip and pipe two rows of white stripes below the raspberries. Alternate rows of raspberries and icing until the flag is completed. Pipe stars on top of the blueberries.

Some people serve this cake right in the pan. If you want to turn it out onto a board before frosting, use parchment paper when you grease and flour the pan.

Sand Architecture

Now in its 29th year, the U.S. Open Sandcastle Competition, a Southern California favorite annual event is scheduled for the weekend of July 18 and 19.

The event features a two-day street festival along Seacoast Drive in Imperial Beach, live entertainment and a sandcastle building competition for children, amateurs and professional teams. The Kids-N-Kastles Competition is held on Saturday while on Sunday the official U.S. Open Sandcastle Competition will be held. This is the championship of sandcastle building where the professional sand carvers vie for the title of Master's Champion. Professional and amateur sand carving teams throughout the U.S. will compete in the sandcastle building competition with more than $21,000 in cash prizes.

The competition originally began in 1980 as a local event organized by a group of Imperial Beach community members. Over the years, the competition has grown to become a national tourist attraction, bringing more than 325,000 spectators to the small surf town over two days.

Imperial Beach’s sandcastle building competition is the largest in the country and attracts sand carving teams from across the United States.