The world is going to Hell in a hand basket, but it is high summer here in the Upper Midwest. It is hard to think about politics when you’re having so much fun. For us, it was a classic weekend that could have been enjoyed in the 1930s: boxing, guns and horse racing.
Friday night it was boxing, a card at the Hyatt in downtown Minneapolis. Our friend Corey Rodriguez, in the red trunks below, battled to a draw:
Heavyweight Joey “Minnesota Ice” Abell destroyed his opponent in single round. In the finale, Phil “the Drill” Williams, a middleweight, battled Derrick Findley. Williams dominated early but Findley, a smaller, pesky fighter kept making his way inside. Williams dropped Findley in the fifth, at the bell, for the bout’s only knockdown. In the photo below, you can see Findley’s corner working on him between rounds:
Findley battled back to earn a well-deserved draw. Joe Malchow asked me earlier today whether I can actually get my wife to go to boxing matches with me. The answer, happily, is yes; my son, of course was there too–he co-promoted the card–as was my 16-year-old daughter.
On Saturday, I lifted weights and went to my favorite shooting range and fired my brand new Marlin 60 .22 rifle, along with my Armalite AR-24 and SIG P938:
We spent Saturday night, as we so often do, chaperoning a party hosted by our youngest daughter. If we sat on our front step, we could hear the Beach Boys playing a couple hundred yards away.
Today, after the gym it was off to the race track, the lovely Canterbury Park in Shakopee, Minnesota, with my wife and our middle daughter. It was a gorgeous day, sunny with a high of 72. Did I win? Of course not! My wife and I each picked a horse in this race; they finished last and next to last. Loree’s horse isn’t even in the photo:
On the other hand, she and my daughter each picked one winner, compared to none for me. We walked down to the paddock to get an up-close look at the horses. I bet on this beautiful filly:
It was the kiss of death, of course. She finished last. My horse picks and stock picks do about equally well.
This post doesn’t really need a political moral, but consider this one: one survey after another shows that conservatives outnumber liberals by one and a half or two to one, yet liberals consistently get their way in public life. Why is that? I think part of the reason is that conservatives are generally happier people than liberals, and tend to be absorbed in their enjoyable private pursuits rather than fighting for a piece of the political pie. So sometimes I think we need to toughen up and get serious like the liberals; other times, I think the most subversive thing we could do would be never to write about politics at all.
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