Happy Birthday, Joan of Arc

600 years old today.
(Photo: Paris, 2006)

Image of the Day

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Bianca Jagger rides into Studio 54 on a white horse for her birthday, 1977 – on view in the new exhibition Incomparable Women of Style: Selections from the Rose Hartman Photography Archives, 1977–2011, November 4th through January 20th at F.I.T.'s Gladys Marcus Library.

Grand Archives

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George Plimpton with Mr. Puss. Photo by Nancy Crampton from the New York Times

The Paris Review recently posted its entire archive of author interviews online. Here's the introduction to George Plimpton's interview of Ernest Hemingway, from the Spring 1958 issue:

HEMINGWAY

You go to the races?

INTERVIEWER

Yes, occasionally.

HEMINGWAY

Then you read the Racing Form . . . . There you have the true art of fiction.

More of that interview here, and the whole archive here.

A Saturday in May

The Kentucky Derby is tomorrow, and for the first time in recent memory we won't be watching the race at our friend Susan's place in Brooklyn. Susan's hospitality is second to none, and we're especially sorry to be so far away on this Derby Day, when Susan and her husband Steve will also be celebrating their wedding with a reception at Belmont Park (Congratulations!).

Strath at Belmont, 2008

I grew up riding horses and when I was little I read just about every book about horse racing that I could get my hands on, but I've never followed the sport as an adult – except when the Triple Crown races roll around every year. Despite the fact that horse racing too often seems to serve up tragedy and beauty in equal measure, there's something about the tradition, the pomp and circumstance, and the hope against hope that this year will be the year that produces a new Triple Crown champion that is undeniably infectious...it all somehow seems to me like Spring incarnate.


Strath has previously recommended John Jeremiah Sullivan's Blood Horses, part memoir of Sullivan's father, a sportswriter, and part history of horses and thoroughbred racing. I won't add to that except to agree that if you're looking for a great read this May, look no further – and to share a passage from the book that I always think of this time of year. In it, Sullivan describes watching footage of Secretariat winning the final leg of the Triple Crown at Belmont in 1973, decimating the previous world record time for the distance by 2 3/5 seconds and finishing 31 lengths ahead of the second place finisher, Twice a Prince:

There is a passage on the tape that I noticed only after watching it dozens of times. It occurs near the end of the race. The cameraman has zoomed up pretty close on Secretariat, leaving the lens just wide enough to capture the horse and a few feet of track. Then, about half a furlong before the wire (it is hard to tell), the camera inexplicably stops tracking the race and holds still. Secretariat rockets out of the frame, leaving the screen blank, or rather filled with empty track. I timed this emptiness – the space between Secretariat exiting and Twice a Prince entering the image – with my watch. It lasts seven seconds. And somehow each of these seconds says more about what made Secretariat great than any shot of him in motion could. In the history of profound absences – the gaps in Sappho's fragments, Christ's tomb, the black panels of Rothko's chapel – this is among the most beautiful.

Secretariat, the Belmont Stakes, 1973

So, tomorrow we'll be raising a mint julep or two (recipe below) to our two- and four-legged friends here and elsewhere, to Spring, and to the hope that this year is the year. Cheers.

I see your vision mama,I put my money on the long shots

On Friday afternoon my brother and my dad and I took the LIRR deep into Queens for a day at Belmont, with refreshments and 6-foot subs courtesy of the FDNY Engine 3, Ladder 12.

I came close a few times but in the end I didn't win anything. After playing it safe for the first two races and coming away with nothing, I decided to go for the longest of the long shots the rest of the time, just because, why not. That didn't pay off either. No matter, it was fun as heck.

The guys from my brother's firehouse brought these huge coolers full of beer and staked a place out in the backyard, where the recreational race fans all hang out between races.

The people-watching is amazing. This group of fans was particularly fun to talk to—they were having a grand old time hanging out in the yard and speculating on the ponies.

The super hardcore bettors often stay inside, studying their racing forms like their lives depend on it. They don't even watch the races half the time. You can bet as little as a dime so things get a little dire.

This was the most interesting race. One of the horses scratched before the race, because as he was walking onto the track he went nuts, bucked his rider and took off. If you click to enlarge, you can see that another horse lost its jockey on the other side of the track, and finished second.

The facilities are super old school—no fancy remodeling needed, thank you.

There are posters of all the great horses and trainers lining the walls.

I liked watching the people who work there. I bet these three groundskeepers have an interesting time, walking around filling divots and shooting the shit. I'm sure it doesn't pay well or anything but there are worse jobs out there, for sure.

When we left, we climbed up on the roof of the train station and walked around.

Even having done it many times, riding the train is always exciting to me. Improving and expanding the railways should be a top priority right now, but is unfortunately, and predictably, running into all kinds of complications.

We had our own complications leaving the track, when we realized we were about three hours early for the next train—so we bussed it to the very end of the F line in Jamaica, and rode the subway all the way back.

Being that far out in any of the boroughs makes you realize how gigantic New York City is. It still blows me away—the size and the density.

I'll be back at Belmont as soon as possible.

And They're Off

My good buddy Susan has a Kentucky Derby party every year at her apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Her family is obsessed with the ponies and she has a complete set of Derby glasses to prove it. Susan's a great hostess and it's always super fun times. The pictures above are completely blurry because for whatever reason I didn't want to disturb this groove by using a flash all over the place. The blurry view is kind of what we were all seeing anyway, several juleps in. Consider it reality-blogging.

The race was actually one of the less spectacular of recent years, and tragedy struck when the lone filly had to be euthanized immediately after breaking both front ankles. Still, I'm excited to see how Big Brown does in the Preakness—he's all anticipation and dreams right now, with the chance to join Seattle Slew as the only undefeated horse to win it all. I don't know that much about horse racing but the hope for the Triple Crown has become for me a measurable part of what makes late spring a great time of year.

There are a couple things I always like to review when Derby Time rolls around every year. One is this book by a dude I used to know name John Jeremiah Sullivan—Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son. Sullivan moved back down south a few years ago and regrettably we all fell out of touch. He had been an editor at Harper's and the book sprang from an award-winning piece he wrote for the October 2002 issue—Horseman, Pass By: Glory, Grief, and the Race for the Triple Crown. Here's an excerpt, from his experience at the Kentucky Derby:

Ivana Trump is here, too, in a tasteful feathered hat. A heavyset frat-looking guy in a white T-shirt and a white cap is screaming at Ivana, and people actually quiet down to enable him. "Ivana!" he bellows. She goes on chatting. "I-V-A-N-A! We love you, Ivana!" She keeps her back to him, but it is clear to all that she is now consciously keeping her back to him, which is fun to see. He has pierced the veil. Emboldened, he switches to Puffy, who now goes by P. Diddy. "P. Daddy! P. Daddy!" he cries. A woman walks up and starts giving him a good slap on the back every time he lets loose with one of his wild namings. I hear her refer to him, in conversation with another bystander, as "my son."

The behavior of this lunatic and his dam raises a question about the people inside the paddock, which is, What kind of person would voluntarily endure what is essentially a foodless outdoor cocktail party of strangers in heavy sun, in a concentration-camp-style enclosure, wearing outlandish clothes and trying to appear relaxed while being gawked at and openly insulted by hundreds if not thousands of drunken hill people? It is sad to be reminded, once again, that all this horse racing business is about the rich, for the rich are hideous. There is nothing they cannot ruin. And, of course, if there is one other thing that horse racing is all about, it is people who do not have money to lose—the bettors—losing it.

So it is beautiful when the horses themselves appear, in their ignorance and their majesty, and assert their presence amid all this crappiness. "Oh Horse, Horse, Horse," wrote D.H. Lawrence in a letter, "when you kick your heels you shatter an enclosure every time," and now I know just what he means. Only those with souls most thoroughly hollowed out by fame fail to turn and watch the three-year-olds when they take their slow lap around the paddock. And the jockeys! Who could not love a sport with its own paid battalion of wee men, their bright, gay silks, their young faces, their ambiguous quasi-midgetry. We have had to evolve a special race of human beings, when you think about it, so that the thoroughbreds may have riders.

You can buy Blood Horses here or at your local bookstore. No matter if you're into horse racing or not, it's a thoroughly enjoyable read.

The other thing I like to revisit at this time of year is a recording I made of the 2004 Preakness Stakes. Having won the Kentucky Derby, Smarty Jones more than delivers on all the excitement and anticipation with a massive win at Pimlico. Of course, we know now that he was not able to close at Belmont—but every time I listen to this, the excitement and the feeling of hope still gives me chills.

The 129th Preakness Stakes mp3

Mark your calendar: The Preakness is May 17th. Here's hoping that Big Brown pulls it off.