Figure 8 racing

During the past week we've seen some publicity about a special event at the Sportsdrome speedway in Clarksville, IN, near the freeways we sometimes take to the mall, movie theater, or Target in Southern IN (and near another short freeway Stephanie takes to work). Weeks ago my co-worker Gail had mentioned she was interested in taking her son to the speedway. Somewhat like at the old Columbus (OH) motor speedway (and like the straightaway National Trails raceway where Stephanie used to race), cars race here all summer (essentially through baseball season). But this track is unusual - we learned - in that it has an optional Figure 8 part of the track. Many races involve cars racing around a short oval track. But other make use of the Figure 8 and go around the turns but also through the Figure 8 portion. This is much more dangerous and - as it turns out - entertaining but as cars become stragglers it's hard for them not to hit each other in the middle of the Figure 8. The special event Friday was not only eight school buses racing - but eight buses painted pink - with some of the proceeds going to fight breast cancer. Pictured above was the Speedrome speedway as I walked up from my camera. The image is kind of deceptive - it wasn't really that dark yet, at 7:20 (I missed the 7 p.m. race). The place was packed, with the corporate sponsors promoting the fund-raiser and people excited about the Figure 8 school bus races. Below is the black "pace bus" - with insignia from the Hooters restaurant chain, one of the corporate sponsors. At that point it was in the parking lot - later it was the real pace bus.

The place was packed - apparently even more so than usual - The food lines were terribly long - reminded me about what I'd heard about the beer lines at the first Churchill Downs night racing night. The souvenir and beer lines, ironically, were not too long. It looked like a third of the people had bought the cool black "Stop Cancer" and "Sportsdrome Blackout" on the back T-shirts (which raised more money). This was definitely a white working class crowd - that reminded me of the non-ESL families at Stephanie's school and of Hamas. Some of this Vincent would have loved when he was a kid. Lots of smokers (since it was basically all outdoors - although people smoked in the men's room with the one long latrine also - Clarksville has no smoking ban and it probably woudn't have been enforce here anyway). Except for the fact that it's private property: I wonder how I would have done trying to get pro-Obama health care reform signatures here. Pictured below are some Hooters staff members selling fund-raising raffle tickets.

I had gotten my colleague's cell phone number, but apparently written it down wrong (and got someone else twice - apparently in NYC - since she has a NYC cell phone number). So I looked for her and her son Tugi for a while. Meanwhile, the racing continued - conventional, stock-car oval racing - only there were a lot of wrecks - Lots of the cars were all beat up and there were lots of red and yellow flags. The announcer was omnipresent, and his trademark message when full-speed racing returned: "We go green! We go green! We go green!"

I was still hungry. There was a VIP area - corporate sponsors? where there was a wider selection of food and no lines, but it didn't look accessible. This was one side bleachers. There were two main sets of bleachers, one on each side.

With my poorly functioning camera and the sun starting to set, one can barely make out the racing cars below.

I was really missing the video feature on my lost camera, partly since much of the thrill of this is in the motion and the noise. The crowd loved the crashes - but not the clean-up wait in between crashes and full-speed racing resuming.

I took this picture below of the west bleachers while looking for Gail and Tugi. I was starting to lose faith that I would find them after I'd been through all of the bleachers two times.

But they yelled out at me - they were sitting in the front row of the east side bleachers. I crawled up there, taking a slightly better picture of the cars racing on my way up.

Even though I had not seen them on my own, Tugi did kind of stick out - He and I were the only Asians in the crowd of some 10,000? - there were a smatteirng of Latinos (any of Stephanie's ESL students?) and African Americans. He's also very outgoing. He appeared to bother an Anglo kid sitting behind us for an hour - talking, jabbing - until the kid finally relented and talked with him and let him sit next to him. He sat in Gail's lap part of the time before that. But still this wouldn't have been half as fun to watch without a family there to watch it with. Stephanie was out with her colleagues on a largely girls night out (partly - it turns out - at a bachelor's party with guys from Ohio!) evening at Fourth Street Live. I had dropped Vincent and Jessi off to see a movie at the Baxter Avenue movie theater. Otherwise, I might have persuaded one or more of them to go. Again, I still hadn't figured out how to get the flash on the camera not to work.

Enjoying the evening and the whole scene with Tugi and Gail was fun - although the whole scene was kind of incongruous - the only two Asians in this white working-class racing crowd with the woman who still has a NYC cell phone number.

The other folks behind us - perhaps after some beers - became impatieht with all of the crashes and long yellow and red (yes - they really came to a complete stop - though I couldn't always understand how the jockeying for places during yellow flags - or whatever color they were - was allowed) flags with no racing - and became rather profance in expressing their dipleasure. Still, none of the three of us could have predicted the thrill when the car Figure 8 racing began - with a really incredible driver who - after the first few of 30 laps - continually daringly threaded the needle so that he got way ahead (with just one other driver, car near him - conceptually - in actuality, they were always "lapping" other cars - so there were cars - and, sometimes, conventional crashes everywhere - amazingly, while I was there, there were no figure 8 crashes - but plenty of very close calls. From this YouTube video, it's clear that there are sometimes such crashes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9v8bYXqlGI

This more like what I saw - plus without the distracting music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZbXbPr6D94

And, then, finally, the pink school buses emerged. There was a lot of excitment and hoopla - but I needed to go pick up Vincent from Jessie's - and - while it was cool - frankly, ti was a little anticlimatic because it was very hard to beat the cars Figure 8 racing and that daring lead driver. The buses did not go as fast, there were no wrecks of any kind while I was still there, and that daring driver's bus conked out after not very long. Clearly, there are sometimes wrecks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv8nqzqlZPs

I continued to watch some as I walked towards my car and headed out into the night, past Slugger Field where the Louisville Bats had just lost a Game 3 International League playoff game to the Durham Bulls, and ontowards the Highlands.

-- Perry

Deam Lake 2009

Last year Stephanie and I spent much of Labor Day weekend at Deam Lake in Southern Indiana helping - among others - Carlos and Nora cook - as our son engaged in his last church youth group activity before running away - and also stayed up late - when we weren't there - and then got sick - beginning his run of lots of excused absences at school before getting kicked out. This year I just drove kids there Saturday AM, hung out and helped out a little with lunch - before returning - unscheduled to pick kids up late Sunday afternoon. Vincent was originally scheduled to go this time - but Jessi got sick and Vincent ended up staying home. Mom's digital camera did better than usual - but with enthusiastic kids and natural environs it's not hard - remember all the kid pictures we got last year? - I'm still missing our regular digital camera, which I may hae to replace. Pictured above youth team member and parent Marcus and parent (like me - with her kid - Jessi - home instead of there - and now parent Carlos - before we embark from the Crescent Hill parking lot. Below Ana's friend Pam, Ana, and I think Emily's friend Erin await departure.


Below children's and youth ministries coordinators Ian and Kate - who camped with daugther Isabel, grandparent Marcia, and youth team member Mary Friday night to set up - greeted Debbie.

Luis, below, was one of the people who asked about Vincent.

Marcia was there to cook and care for granddaughter Isabel and to enjoy and contribute to the weekend.

Participants gathered, below, in a circle in the middle of the campsite.

I've got a block on the kid sitting to Luis' right. You'll recall the two of them and two other kids sitting on our Taurus in the penultimate picture from last year's Deam Lake photo array.

Marcus and Mary relaxed, below.

Ian cared for Isabel (now 15 months old - instead of 3 months old - like last year).

Marcus brought a game that resembled cornhole (below).

Isabel - below - slept through lunch.

The girls - below - served themselves lunch - which included cold cuts and great chicken salad - for sandwiches. I understand the meals got a little more adventurous as they went along - but I missed this - and unfortunately swimming in the lake (where some of Stephanie's students go with their families to swin during the summer).

Luis, Ana, and Pam took their turn washing dishes.

Shortly after lunch, I drove home, missing the swimming. But I got a call Sunday afternoon to come back. Kate and Ian had brought most of the tents and camping and cooking gear, and so it turns out they needed help. I drove Pam, Ana, and Jubilee back to church, where their parents awaited them. Maybe next year I'll get to swim.

-- Perry

World Fest 2009

On the way to our annual pilgrimage to World Fest - downtown Louisville's Labor Day weekend international event - we stopped at the "Fireside Gallery' at church for an openin gof paintings by Lalitha, a church member (left above). Ada (right) curated. Arriving at the festival some 20 minutes later - sans our friend Sarah - our out-of-town friend who usually goes with us - we immeidately ran into several friends, including Laura from church (below right) and a horse character who hung out with us for several minutes.

We also ran into Andrew from church - and - later - brother Stephen and Ada. Then Gail (below and below below) from work (with her kid, originally from Mongolia, somewhere else at the festival). Later we ran into someone who had volunteered for the Peace Corps in Mongolia. Stephanie has one Mongolian American student. Gail told us she's taking her kid to the speedway in Clarksville (IN) next weekend.

Although there was plenty of overlap across some places, there were a lot more places to get food around the festival than I had remembered before.

And the bands were great - a Mexican band with a great fiddler and a NYC Celtic rock band with a great fiddler. Below were a folk Anglican pastor couple whose adopted African American son danced with other (white, female) Irish dancers to a couple of the latter band's tunes.

Below you can almost make out the fiddler on the left.

And, below, the Irish dancers.

On our way back to the car we caught the last couple of minutes of a funk band too (including Ada from the gallery opening and spouse Stephen dancing) - three good bands, lots of people and lots of great food - Friday night - World Fest 2009 (sans Vincent - who later regretted he'd stayed home)

-- Perry

More news

Stephanie survived her first mammogram, Vincent got his second paycheck (and gave us only another $50), Larry sounded better to Stephanie (as his latest big landlord-tenant conflict recedes into the horizon post-settlement) and may come visit us for Thanksgiving, and Mom and I talked about November and December and various visit possibilities, some potentially involving other family members. I had a meeting late Wednesday with potential new Panel clients and a meeting Thursday morning with a man from church who is also a top manager at work and is a client (see “Shifting Assignments”) which went not great, but OK.

-- Perry

Another town hall

Once again I got to a town hall public meeting on health care reform when it was about to start and wound up in the overflow area – this one inside with Congressperson Yarmuth (D-Lousiville) and a local radio personality helping MC – at Central High School – about six blocks into the predominantly working-class, majority African American West Side. Because of my Florida driver’s license, I’m not sure I would have been able to get into the auditorium anyway.

There were more people here, but the crowd – even with plenty of opponents, including a bus – was more heavily tilted toward pro-health care reform people, including plenty of single-payer people. Yarmuth said he’s a co-sponsor of the singler-payer bill but he seems prepared to vote for whatever comes out although he said we’d probably someday wind up with single-payer. Yarmuth started out by setting out a range of health insurance reform regulations – no pre-existing condition exclusions, no lifetime caps, no kicking people off insurance for getting sick, portability – that, when he asked, most people there agreed with.

I couldn’t see Congressperson Baron Hill Monday – and I could see Yarmuth on the big screen – and I’m not sure how Yarmuth would have done with a more hostile crowd – but Yarmuth was a little more goofy, smiling nervously, and – noticeable on the big screen – moving around a lot. He raised some more complicated issues than Hill perhaps, and we had 1 ½ hours and so the questioners had more time to raise complex issues. Eventually he showed one concerned person that what they were complaining about in the proposal was a consequence of the reglations most people had agreed to (which suggested how radical some of them were). People brought up abortion, end-of-life decisions, and of course the budget deficit, the constitutuion, and government power. Many seemed skeptical about Keynesian countercyclical policies, though he tried to explain them. I was proud of both Hill and Yarmuth, who – before at least mixed crowds – sticking to their guns. They both laid out principles they were seeking and Yarmuth – when asked – said although he is a single-payer supporter – said he was not doctrinaire and would listen to suggestions from anyone. Like Hill, in response to a question about tort reform, Yarmuth said some of these Indiana-style lawsuit merit review boards were in the bill, but Yarmuth went into more detail, saying there were grants in there to encourage states to adopt these. He also conceded that – with all of the existing law the 1,000-page bill amends – you’d really have to read something like 10,000 pages to take it all in.

Health care reform advocates had gathered as early as 4 p.m. and were to have a vigil afterwards at 8 p.m. I got there just before the meeting was to start – at about 6:30 p.m. – and – after some delay – got waved into the overflow area without the heavy airport-style security (and ID-ing) that those going into the main auditorium went through. I saw Carloa and Jamie from church and a few others I recognized – though not the Organizing for America organizer whom I had met Saturday and not come back to make calls for Sunday. On the way there I called Bruce’s voice-mail to say I would not make it to canvassing Thursday – three nights out in a row, with two of them to health care – plus I don’t feel great. In my e-mail Wednesday night was a notice that national GOP chief Michael Steele was to be speaking Thursday AM in Floyds Knobs, IN, against health care reform, but I won’t make it to that. I saw the same ex-WLKY reporter, now with Fox, there was who was there Monday night in New Albany. Yarmuth pointed to President Obama’s speech to Congress – next Wednesday night – just scheduled today – as an important event in which the president may finally say more specifically what he wants, including possibly accepting state coops instead of a national public option (though Yarmuth hinted such a coop would have trouble developing in Kentucky with the sickest population and with a wide swath of rural areas without enough doctors and nurses). We’ll see what happens then and see if I volunteer or go to any more events before then.

-- Perry

Silver bridge encounters

Every summer after school was out my Grandma Gregory and I (accompanied by Grandpa Gregory before he died) were driven down to Mason, West Virginia by my Dad. Along the long winding route 33 I would get oral lessons about Ohio history and geography as well as family history. On each trip I heard some version of the stories and lessons were repeated. The drive to me seemed to last forever and we had to pack as if we would be gone forever (instead of just a week).

We often stopped for a snack at Yankee Burgers (a rip-off White Castles) in Nelsonville where Grandma and I had once taken the scenic train (later I would take Perry and Vincent to help relive pleasant memories). At some point we stopped at the boot outlet in Nelsonville and drove by signs for the college at Hocking Hills. The beauty of Ohio geography could be seen.

Around this area and maybe even before we got to the Hocking Hills area Dad would point out the oil pumps we would pass on the sides of route 33 in various fields. We would also pass a train track with a sawmill almost right on the tracks. We even had to stop once at a brick kiln where they make bricks out of natural clay in the surrounding soil and walk around a park beside a canal because I had gotten car sick. I learned about natural resources of Ohio.

Once we got further along into Athens county the stories really started to pick up. One hill in particular always brought on the explanation of how cars in the old days would have to speed up to make it to the top of the hill because it was so steep. Dad would laugh retelling stories of Grandpa doing this drive and speeding up and Grandma telling him to slow down. We would pass Ohio University (where Perry and I later would explore and find the best bagel place in the world) before slowing down to go up another hill. This hill slowly wraps around a hill leading out of Athens and into the little town of Darwin. Dad always retold the story of putting chains on the tires and driving up this hill in the snow to buy my Mom's engagement ring. Yep, family history lesson 101.

We would wind our way through the hills passing cows munching on grass, steep drop-offs on the sides of the roads, houses perched precariously on the hills, the now two lane route 33 completely canopied by trees, and if we were in the right season dogwoods blooming everywhere. As we drove down the last hill (Dad exclaiming to look out the back window so we could see just how steep the hill was) we would get a panoramic view of the Ohio River and Grandma would explain we were entering Pomeroy, Ohio, "A mile wide and as far back as you could see." Which really isn't very far since it seems to be clinging to the cliffs above the Ohio.

Eventually to the left you could see the bridge and then Grandma would recount the story of a similar bridge from Ohio to Point Pleasant, West Virginia. That famous bridge was the Silver Bridge. Grandma would tell the story of one winter night in the 1960s when the bridge was full of traffic the bridge for some unknown reason collapsed taking all the cars into the frozen Ohio river. Grandma would tell how she had been on that bridge many times before that and the bridge always looked OK, but that night people lost their lives. The Silver bridge was eventually replaced but the story of the Silver bridge stuck with Grandma and now as we would be crossing this different bridge just several miles upstream she would retell the story. It really made me pay attention to the crossing (sometimes fearing if the bridge fell we might fall on a barge floating underneath). Ohio river history lesson brought to life.

Imagine my surprise when years later while living in Tallahassee, a movie came out that was about the Silver Bridge collapse. I saw the preview in the Tallahassee Mall movie theater and was brought back to the drive to the Ohio river along route 33 and all the stories I had heard. It wasn't just a personal drive anymore -- Hollywood had learned about my small area of the world. Richard Gere was even going to be in it! A story about my little Point Pleasant where Uncle Boyd and Aunt Garnet lived. (Bridge above is a railway bridge in Point Pleasant just around the corner from the replacement of the Silver bridge.)

The Mothman Propecies was the story of how strange sightings of a large bird-shaped man or moth-shaped man had plagued the area around an abandoned dynamite factory in Point Pleasant for a year before the Silver bridge collapsed. Legends of this type of apparition in different cultures tell of it as an omen or predictor of some type of disaster. In the movie this "mothman" predicted several accidents that preceded the bridge collapse but was never seen again after the collapse. My cousin Sarah, who lives in Mason (just upriver) tells that they abandoned dynamite factory was a hangout for teenage couples. She swears the apparitions were really large sand cranes (the name of the road a lot of the sightings happened on is Sand Crane road.) But she was excited about having Hollywood come and make a movie in Point Pleasant, but more for economic reasons.

When Perry and I went to the Schwarz family reunion in Point Pleasant this summer, we managed to get away for just a small amount of time to go to the Ohio river front area. There we were able to go to the new Mothman Museum and see public art. There was a huge metal sculpture (12 feet) of what one artist thought the mothman must have looked like. In the picture below there also seems to be a mothwoman whose lost her wings.

Here is mothman without his mothwoman. There was a sign near the sculpture explaining that there is now an annual mothman festival. It not only memorializes the Silver bridge collapse but people from around the world (according to the sign) come to look for more signs of the very existence of a paranormal/otherwordly phenomena that predicts disasters. Stories in the Mothman Museum tell of "men in black" coming to Point Pleasant and interviewing people around the time of the bridge disaster. Supposedly those men were from the government and might have been hiding something.

In the museum Perry and I were able to look at old newspaper articles describing the sightings of the mothman. Many of the articles were from before the bridge collapsed and postulated that maybe it was a deformed bird from all the chemicals at the abandoned dynamite factory or as it was called in the area TNT. They also had some other artist representations of what the mothman might have looked like along with recorded interviews of those in the area that reportedly saw this figure. Even some of the TV shows that I've watched at various times on Discovery and Travel Channnels that focused on the mothman figure were playing on different monitors around the room.

The museum also had some of the Hollywood props used during the making of the film. Even though some of the movie was filmed in Pennsylvania instead of Point Pleasant the museum still had Laura Linney's police uniform from the movie (below). They also had one of the telephones used in the movie (you'll have to see the movie to know why this is important). While we were in the museum we called Vincent (who has seen the movie) at his Dad's house. We asked him what he wanted from the gift shop and ended up getting him a Mothman t-shirt...in black of course.

Lots of depictions of the mothman were in the museum. Some were more recent than others. At the museum we were directed by an employee to check out a shop across the street that had mothman paraphernalia and also Chief Cornstalk paraphernalia (that will have to be another blog entry). So after taking one last look around at all the mothman exhibits (we were on a tight schedule to get to Columbus for our flight to Vegas) we headed over to the other shop.

As we crossed the street we saw our own personal mothman! It wasn't nearly as tall as some of the other exhibits made it out to be but it had a striking resemblance to someone we know.

The shop keeper came out and explained that if you took a picture of this creature with your flash on the lights really did seem to glow. I'm not sure about the glowing eyes but if this creature was going to be on a plane with me to Vegas I was a little scared.

The shop keeper took us inside where he had a cute little Chihuahua walking around the store. He had everything from baseball caps, postcards, posters, and t-shirts about both the mothman and Chief Cornstalk. We started asking questions about some of the artwork (which was different from the museums) and he explained that some of the artwork was based on more recent sightings. He and his son and his son's girlfriend had gone out to the old TNT area. They took digital cameras and took lots of pictures. When they viewed the film there were lots of orbs and strange shadows. When he got home and enlarged some of the orbs he found figures of the mothman inside of them. In his orbs the mothman has a slightly wolf like face. He says his son's girlfriend won't go out to the sigh with them anymore after seeing the pictures. I'm not sure if I would have either. He got out copies of his pictures since we seemed interested. They were a little dog eared but we could definitely see there was something off in the pictures (see below).

Point Pleasant in my mind has now changed. It is no longer a sleepy little West Virginia town where my family has roots. It now has a commercial Hollywood exploitation feel. Perry and I drove from Point Pleasant to Columbus to catch our flight. Now my memories of route 33 and then the following drive from Mason to Point Pleasant have been changed. Route 33 has been straightened and makes the drive from Mason, West Virginia to Columbus, Ohio only an hour and a half long. No more winding roads, no more drives through Darwin, it even has a bi-pass around Lancaster. We made it in time for our flight...but then a whole other adventure started.

---- Stephanie

More health news

We continue to fight health problems. Stephanie and Vincent both have colds/allergies, but they went to work anyway today. By tonight they seemed a little better. My skin problems seem to be getting better. But I went to my first Weight Watchers meeting in several weeks, and my weight has exploded, and so I’m going to have to work on that. Mom is still trying to set up an appointment to start her treatment. Our repaired dishwasher continues to work. And Vincent’s pay check cleared and he started paying for his own lunches. We've gone for weeks without going to the grocery store. But Stephanie and Vincent went to Choi's Korean market this weekend and so Tuesday Stephanie cooked bokchoy and bulgogi and then we went to Smoothie King in St. Matthews for the first time. Stephanie also stopped at the Phoenix Hill Farmer's Market so who knows what kind of goodies she has planned for tomorrow.

P.S. A couple of slight surprises: Stephanie’s principal was willing to buck her colleague and leave Stephanie with just the Read 180 class, some inclusion, and maybe one regular ENL class (or maybe not). She won’t have to do much planning and only limited grading. The principal said it’ll make up for last year when Stephanie had a big (18 – for ENL) class. Stephanie applied to do after-school tutoring this year but her salary is high enough that some of her colleagues with less experience or fewer degrees may beat her out.I was a little surprised that Vincent essentially confirmed what I had though already: that he’s not that enthusiastic about one new part of his life and he doesn’t expect it to go on forever – which is quite different from what he used to hint about the previous chapter. Not sure if it’s by accident that this came up after we’d watched another episode of “More to Love,” the plus-size version of “The Batchelor” (in which Luke shocked me by sending Anna home).Allergies and my weight management news – still not good this week.

P.P.S. Some confusion about Vincent’s counseling appointments, good news from Ohio that Stephanie’s mother, Nancy, was able to resume chemotherapy treatment, and me not feeling great and not getting along with family members.

P.P.P.S. Stephanie goes for her first ever mammogram Thursday afternoon.

-- Perry