Phoebe Kate

We all know that black clothes make us look slimmer and red ties are “power” ties, but did you know that priests wear black to signify submission to God?   If you own a red car, it is more likely to be stolen?  Sports teams often paint the locker rooms used by opposing teams bright pink because it reputedly saps energy?

Brides in the Middle Ages wore green to symbolize fertility?  You’re more likely to lose your temper in a yellow room?  Doctors and nurses wear white to give you a sense that everything is sterile –  although with the staph infections that kill many thousands of hospital patients every year, they’re not fooling anybody but themselves.  

Fashion consultants recommend wearing blue to interviews because it signifies loyalty?Workers are more productive in blue rooms and weight lifters can heft heavier weights in a blue gym? 

Did you know that blue is considered an unappetizing color for food? 

Quick, somebody better tell that to Bobby Flay before he comes up with yet another blue corn recipe and continues to gross out the judges on “Iron Chef America.”

–phoebe kate 

No, they’re not sad.  It’s just that stoves and refrigerators aren’t (and as far as I can recall have never been) available in that shade. Why???  Blue is a strange exclusion because it’s almost everybody’s favorite color and coordinates so well with other colors.  

Back in the day, major appliances were available in orangey-gold and pea soup green and brick brown.  Today they’re popular in ten shades of beige, black and stainless steel.

Kitchen designers predict that red will be the next big fad.

Ick.

–phoebe kate

I admit it, I’m not a big fan of Halloween.  No right-wing religious issues here — I don’t believe in the devil and I think that fundamentalist churches plugging in a “Harvest Festival” in lieu of Halloween parties is both hypocritical and idiotic. 

I like wearing costumes and the notion of haunted houses and things that go bump in the night and the unexplained.  But I don’t think, with the diagnoses of childhood diabetes on a mind-boggling rise and the preponderance of warped psyches out there, that kids should be collecting bags of crap candy that are potentially studded with razor blades, garnished with ground glass or laced with poisonous substances.  How well do any of us know our neighbors?  Just ask anyone who found out, much to their shock, that the ‘pleasant gentleman’ next door is a sex offender or psychotic.  Sad to say, it happens all the time in 21st century America.

Okay, lecture is over.  Now, here’s my real beef. 

Every year, the Food Network — a channel I truly enjoy watching most of the time because I glean food tips and good recipes — does a week of Halloween-themed ‘cuisine.’  It is gross, to put it mildly.

I don’t want to see Rachael Ray’s Worms and Eyeballs or Sandra Lee’s Bloodshot Eye Cupcakes or graveyard cake adorned with cookies piping-bagged to say “RIP” or Vampire Kiss Martini with a pair of fanged dentures in the glass.  (I guess Dracula forgot to use Polident that day.) 

Ewwww.

Emeril looks bad enough as himself — being made up as a green-faced ghoul or the Hunchback of Notre Dame does not improve his looks one bit.  Sandra Lee may get her jollies attiring herself as Cher and Madonna and Marilyn Monroe in scanty bustiers, but all that cleavage and Green Chocolate Slimedoo is enough to put you off your feed for the rest of the day.

Boo humbug.

–phoebe kate      

Yesterday, when the race horse George Washington suffered a fatal injury in the Breeders Cup Classic, I totally lost it.

I started crying and couldn’t stop.  I cried through the remaining 20 minutes of the ESPN broadcast.  I cried while I put dinner on to cook.  I went and sat on my porch and smoked cigarettes and cried.  I cried for over 2 hours nonstop. At one point, I wondered if I’d lost my mind, was having a nervous breakdown and would have to take myself downtown and commit myself to the dreaded fourth floor of our local hospital.  I mean, after all, this was a horse I was only casually familiar with — it wasn’t Barbaro.  At one point, my husband came out and asked me if I was okay.  I said, “No, but there’s nothing you can do about it.”  He understood. 

And then, when I was all cried out, I realized what had happened to me.

When my mother died after a catastrophic illness in 1977, I didn’t cry.  I had to be strong for the rest of the family.  When I had three miscarriages in the 1980s, I didn’t cry.  Life had to go on.  I had my other children to care for. When I found out I had cancer in 1990s, I didn’t cry.  I had people depending on me to be brave. When my father died in 2000, I didn’t cry.  I had too many arrangements to make, too many things to do.  On 9/11, I didn’t cry.  I just sat in horror and watched the TV and felt sick to my stomach as I realized the world and our country had been changed forever and not for the better.

I haven’t cried in the last 30 years over anything.  I’ve lost family and beloved pets, witnessed tragedies, personal and otherwise, had 4 bouts with cancer and just kept on going like the Ever-Ready Battery Bunny.

The sad demise this Saturday of a race horse I barely knew was my catharsis.  

And now you know more about me than you probably ever wanted to know.  But isn’t that what blogs are all about?

–phoebe kate 

Today was yet one more black day in the annals of Thoroughbred racing. 

George Washington, an internationally-known 4-year-old colt, shattered his leg in the prestigious Breeders Cup Classic at Monmouth Park, NJ and was euthanized trackside.

Why did this happen?

George Washington had been retired from a successful racing career to stud service – a highly lucrative business.  However, he proved to have infertility problems and his owners and trainer decided to return him to the track. 

This year, before going into the Classic, he’d run three races and performed poorly.  Equibase, the major online source of information for bettors and investors, did not deem him up to par for this competition. In an article in Bloodhorse,  the Bible of Thoroughbred knowledge, references are made to this animal’s “mental mishaps” in his career. 

His trainer was quoted as saying, “We have nothing to lose in running him [in the Breeders’ Cup Classic].”  And so, very logically of course, the choice was made to run that horse into the ground today, in front of thousands at the track and millions on TV, in pursuit of a 3 million dollar purse.  All they had to lose was a reproductively challenged stallion that wasn’t earning his keep any longer anyhow.  No big deal, right?

It is a big deal for those who witnessed it in person and on TV. 

Statistically, 1 out of every 20 races results in a horse breaking down and being euthanized. There are literally hundreds of horse races at tracks all over the U.S. every day of the year.  Were this percentage involving football or basketball games, there would be a public outcry and reforms to the respective sports. 

George Washington’s jockey tributes the horse with saving his life because even when its leg was horrifically fractured, the animal refused to give up and fall down.  That is the noble spirit of the Thoroughbred, and it has been taken advantage of and abused long enough.  Racing has traditionally been called the sport of kings, and it is.  Kings don’t care about their subjects or their servants, only about their coffers being well-filled.  The same can be said for those in the racing industry, and this horse today is one of their victims.  

I have been a race fan since I was a little kid, but I can no longer sanction a sport that treats sentient creatures with less respect than they do NASCAR vehicles.

Rest in peace, George Washington.  You deserve it.  You gave your all.

– phoebe kate