Fauci, Nicknames, and Washington

I was at work Thursday evening when, just before the 2020 Major League Baseball televised debut game between the New York Yankees and the Nationals in Washington, DC, pandemic guru Dr. Anthony Fauci threw out the ceremonial first pitch.  I did hear the funny reactions on sports talk radio, prompting me to later check it out.  The good doctor strode up confidently to the mound...and then proceeded to hurl a zinger about 10-15 feet to the left of the waiting catcher.  Not as bad as the radio jocks sounded...I was impressed that Fauci could even throw that far, to be perfectly honest.  Once I had a much worse throw...I was standing nearby a softball game one afternoon while in the sixth grade at Nova Elementary and a stray ball came rolling my way. I scooped it up and then helpfully heaved it back with all my might...only the ball didn't go back, but rather at a 90 degree angle to the left, straight at the school building: it was a very embarrassing run for me to retrieve it, sigh...

Speaking of Washington and sports, the report is out now that the city's National Football League franchise, after finally dumping its moniker "Redskins" following years of harsh criticism, will be moving forward this season as "The Washington Football Team".  And why not, since in soccer you already have teams like "Los Angeles Football Club" and "New York City Football Club".  Personally, I searched myself to come up with appropriate nickname replacements, producing results like "Big Fat Buildings", "Mall", "Museums", "Metro", "Bureaucrats", "Tourists", "Lobbyists"...you see, I visited there a couple of years ago.  But after giving it all due thought, my final suggestion has to be the Washington Jelly Beans, in honor of our late former president Ronald Reagan's penchant for the candy...that should help to soothe all the conservatives miffed at the dumping of "Redskins".  And besides, everybody likes jelly beans, right?  Okay I get it, never gonna happen...

Kentucky Derby Sneaks Up on Me Again

I first began to follow the Triple Crown of American three-year-old thoroughbred horseracing back in 1968, when the names Forward Pass, Dancer's Image, and Stage Door Johnny became the headlines.  Since then, I have tended to forget the three races comprising this tradition...the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes...until mid-spring each year when once again the whole process renews itself.  Ultimately, the goal is to see whether one horse can win all of the extremely competitive races, making it a Triple Crown champion.  In my lifetime of sixty years, I've only seen four of these: Secretariat in 1973, Seattle Slew in 1977, Affirmed in 1978, and...finally, after a gap of 38 years...American Pharoah in 2015.  By far the most impressive horse I've ever seen was Secretariat, which blew away the rest of the field in the Belmont by well over thirty lengths.  But today, few are thinking about the Triple Crown...instead they are looking at this year's lineup and probably marveling at the lack of any clear-cut favorite...

At last look over the field of twenty entrants, Classic Empire was the slight favorite at 4-1, followed by McCraken and Always Dreaming, each at 5-1.  Then it's Irish War Cry at 6-1.  After these four, the odds get appreciably longer...however, I have a hunch (for what it's worth) that Gormley, at 15-1 and with an intriguing name (always a factor in my choosing which horse to root for) just might be the proverbial dark horse in this race.  But if I were to consider just the "top" four, I'd pick Classic Empire...although I also dig the name "Irish War Cry".  Then again, one of the biggest longshots in this year's Derby is Battle of Midway, probably not owned by anyone Japanese...

Today's Kentucky Derby is set to take place at 6:34 pm Eastern Time.  NBC will be broadcasting it and is already showing several hours of pre-race programming.  I'm writing this article from my "favorite" Starbucks in Magnolia Parke here in Gainesville, but I think I just might head on home afterward to watch some of that hype and analysis...

LATER...my hunches were wrong...no surprise there: Always Dreaming, which ended up as the betting favorite, started out fast and took advantage of its relatively inside post position and hugged the rail, thereby covering less distance then its rivals...finishing strong on the rain-soaked, muddy Churchill Downs track as 2017's Kentucky Derby winner.  A couple of longshots finished second and third and then Classic Empire crossed the line in fourth place, several lengths behind the winner...Gormley was in the middle of the pack of finishers.  Now it's on to the Preakness as the topic of discussion will be Always Dreaming's prospects of keeping hopes for a Triple Crown winner alive this year...

Second Frog

I've grown accustomed lately to sitting out in the middle of my back yard around midnight and looking out at the sky.  Because there is a lot of overhead tree growth facing the west, my direction tends to be toward the east, particularly the southeast.  And this time of the year at my latitude, the southeastern night sky isn't very much to behold.  As a matter of fact, under the city lights I have to endure with my star-gazing, there is only one isolated star out in that part of the sky to view: Deneb Kaitos, or Beta Ceti, the brightest star in the constellation Cetus...

In Greek mythology, Cetus represents the whale, or sea-monster...I don't suppose the ancients made much of a distinction between the two...that was attacking the fair Andromeda when the hero Perseus, flying in on the winged horse Pegasus, rescued her...while Queen Cassiopeia, Andromeda's mother, looked on with fear.  All five of these characters are constellations in the autumn evening sky, with Cetus being the southernmost.  While I sit there looking at the sky, Cetus stretches across it from just above the eastern horizon to the southeast.  It has some discernibly visible stars, but overall is still a relatively faint constellation.  As for the name Deneb Kaitos...

Deneb Kaitos, the more traditional name given to Beta Ceti, means "tail of the whale".  But just last year at a meeting of astronomers who apparently didn't have anything better to do, its official designation was changed to Diphda, which in Arabic means "second frog".  Diphda had been around for centuries as well and had been in a kind of competition with Deneb Kaitos for the star's name.  I grew up calling it Deneb Kaitos, but I'll keep Diphda handy in case that I hear or read someone discussing it that way.  As for "first frog", which star is that? The bright Fomalhaut of the constellation Piscis Austrinus, which just precedes it along approximately the same latitude in the sky.  Ah, now I see it: two frogs hopping endlessly across the heavens, one after the other...

Diphda, or Deneb Kaitos, or Beta Ceti, or Second Frog is an orange giant, much larger than our sun, cooler, and with a considerably shorter life span.  It is 96 light-years away and there haven't as yet been any planets discovered orbiting it (info provided by Wikipedia).   That's a bit different from "first frog" Fomalhaut, a triple-star system which is much closer at 25 light-years, the largest star not being a giant and recently discovered to possess a planetary system.   Sometimes while just sitting there gazing at the sky it's easy to just see the stars as dots...looking up facts about each of them can enhance the viewing experience...

Leon: A Cold and Stormy Character

For nearly a week already, the weather forecasts have been pointing to today as being a rather nasty day.  Initially it was projected to dip down into the twenties.  Then it looked as if we were in for an ice storm with freezing rain, icy roads and even a potential for the first appreciable snowfall here in Gainesville since December of 1989.  But as the day grew close, the forecast backed off about the severity of the impending storm, which I was astonished yesterday to discover possesses a name: Winter Storm Leon.

I had long thought that putting a name to something automatically makes it more memorable, and some of these wintertime frontal storms can cause at least as much destruction and injury as a hurricane strike.  Apparently, somebody in the weather bureau agrees with me; I wonder how long this naming of winter storms has been going on.  I don't recall hearing anyone refer to other such storm systems by a name, but Leon does start with the letter "L": doesn't this imply that there already have been winter storms A through K? And has this already been going on previous to this year?  My next proposal will be for them to start naming summertime heat waves!

In spite of temperatures giving us a break with Leon (at least here in Gainesville), we are still stuck in very rainy circumstances here and cold (for us)...it isn't supposed to get warmer than the low forties all day long.  Looks like I won't be running outside today!

Campaigns for Local March Election Underway

Late yesterday afternoon I was driving here in Gainesville along NW 43rd Street, northbound.  As I approached the 16th Boulevard intersection I saw several people smiling, waving at the passing cars, and holding up signs touting the candidacy of Annie Orlando for city commission.  I thought oh no, here we go again.  March local elections.

It never fails to amaze me that, with the already pathetically low voter turnout we have in this supposedly democracy-loving country of ours, my home town of Gainesville regularly holds its commission elections in March...when voter turnout is almost certain to be around a quarter of total registered voters or less.  This gives candidates with more extreme views and a more hardline, committed following of a relatively small number of voters the opportunity to sneak into elected office when a November election with its higher (but still too low) turnout would more likely prevent this from happening.  We have three races for our local government body that will be voted for on March 11...one at-large commission seat that will represent the whole city of Gainesville and two district seats that will represent certain sections. 

Aside from the fact that Annie Orlando is a Democratic Party candidate who seems to have establishment support for the at-large seat, and the Democrats usually win city-wide elections here in Gainesville, the alliterative, geographical, pop musical, and American historical nature of her name will probably garner a few extra votes as well.  The name Annie Orlando has that sonorous, alliterative ring to it, the Joe-Montana-like geographical glamour, the Tony-Orlando-and-Dawn pop musical allure (for those old fogies among us), and, last of all, the Annie Oakley American western history appeal...although that one is a tad more obscure than the others. 

I don't know which candidates I'll be voting for, but at least I'll find out more about who's running in the next few weeks and go to my precinct and cast my ballot on March 11.  I take my this civic responsibility of voting seriously and haven't missed an election in more than thirty years.  Annie, your name has pizazz but don't count on my vote unless I discover there's more substance behind it...

Retroactive Name Changing

As I was passing through Starke (about 25 miles northeast of Gainesville) this morning on my way to pick up my son in Jacksonville for a Gainesville visit this Labor Day weekend, I looked over at the southbound side of US 301. It was bumper-to-bumper traffic, most of which I'm sure was destined for the University of Florida's season-opening home football game against Miami University (of Ohio), to begin at noon. I had planned my trip so that I would be driving against this flow. By the time we're on our way back, we should be pretty clear of extraneous traffic (I'm writing this just outside of Jacksonville).

Although you may think from the first paragraph that this article is about traffic and football, it is neither. Rather I was intrigued by the way that, when referring to Miami University, it almost always bears that parenthetic tag "of Ohio" dragging along behind it. This is, of course, to prevent any confusion between it and the University of Miami (which oddly never seems to need the tag "of Florida"). I'm sure that in the past, Miami University didn't have to be distinguished this way. And I think about other "modified" names as well.

Remember George Bush, our 41st president? Nobody ever referred to him as "George H.W. Bush" until his begotten namesake-with-a-dubya became president. Now, when discussing his record, it's "George H.W. Bush did this", "George H.W. Bush did that".

After being prodded by an influential producer/record manager, John Mellencamp originally launched his recording career under the name "Johnny Cougar". He later had misgivings and briefly changed to "John Cougar Mellencamp" before finally dropping "Cougar" altogether. But when discussing his early hits like Hurts So Good or Jack and Diane, it's now always "John Mellencamp" as the artist who recorded them, not "Johnny Cougar".

Or take how we have been designating our years. Charles Osgood notwithstanding, there has been the greatest resistance to referring to years in the 2000's according to the previous centuries' custom like, for example, "nineteen o-three" or "fourteen ninety-two". Instead of "the twenty-o-four election", it's "the two thousand and four election". But now we're starting to go back to form and say "twenty-ten" for 2010. So what, you say? Just that I wonder whether at some point in the future, when referring back to 2004, those looking back won't just refer to it as "twenty-o-four", something that almost no one (except of course Osgood) used to say.

I wonder what people, places, or anything else with which we are currently comfortable naming a certain way will end up bearing a modified designation, a modification that will be retroactively applied.

Perhaps you may think that I am nitpicking a little with this, but I don't think so. Of course, Miami U, Poppy Bush, John(ny) {(Cougar)[Mellencamp]}, and 2004 are all, in essence, the same regardless of how they were designated at different times. So are Beijing (formerly Peking, even more formerly Peiping), Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) and Mumbai (formerly Bombay). But if you're going to go back and try to recreate a scenario from the past, you better get in line with the "old" way of naming things!