History & Comment for May 5, 2025

 A look at historical and current events on this day, comment and humor so dry it would make a camel thirsty. 

Transcript

This is History and Comment for Monday the 5th of May 2025.  

Since we last talked the 151st Kentucky Derby was ran in the rain and mud on Saturday.    At post time the best bet to win, place and show was, Journalism, Sandman, Luxor Café and Sovereignty.    Sovereignty won and Journalism was number 2.    Long shot Owen’s Almightly, at 40 to 1, was the biggest surprise of the day, placing 5th.   The purse is highly logrythmic in a negative way,  First place was 3 times what second was. Owen’s $150,000 purse for 5th, is nearly 1/3 of his lifetime winnings to date.   The question that I can not find an answer to is if he is a stallion or gelding?  But the odds are that he is intact.   

Breeding horses is as tricky as any breeding project.   But the variable are much greater and even less predictable.   Horse breeders are like every other breeder,  chase a winner.   Plant breeders would call it elite by elite.    And not wasting time on longshots.   As such, all of the horses running this year were descendants of Secretariat, the 1973 Triple Crown winner.   

Which brings up the point of stud fees.   The hot sause is Into Mischief. He did not run in the Kentucky Derby due to an injury,  but his offspring are doing very well including this year’s winner Sovereignty.   The price was $250,000 late last week and they want to know who the mare will be.  Your run of the mill mare will not be going to Kentucky for a hot date.  

Last December, I had a chance to visit Grandview Clydesdale Farm in Florida.   The story was they are top notch and help the folks with the big red wagon and their stock.    If you want to breed draft horses the fees were not in the nosebleed range.    $1,000 will get you some very nice genetics.    The Derby winner fees start near 10x that amount.   

Way back in the year 553 The second Council of Constantinople begins its 4 week debate.  This was one of the gatherings to debate and bring unity to the beliefs among Christians.   The practical problem is these debates very quickly turn to extremely fine parsing of words and their meaning in the same way two lawyers will debate.   This still happens in many church debates today.   Recently, I was reading a history book on our denomination.  There was an agreement to merge two factions that held very different views on a topic.   They agreed to merge, provided they did not have to agree on what the meaning of the word “for” was in a critical scripture.   Now that seems simple, but it was not trite nor trivial.   Political inertia has settled the debate over time, without answering the question.   

Today as in the 6th century, who gets to write the story determines which narrative and thought will prevail.   That applies to the Church, media and Politics. 

King John of England is having problems in 1215.   It would be very difficult to define the point where a King’s total authority has been a fore gone conclusion.    John was in such a position.    A group of powerful land barons were insisting on limits to the King’s powers.    They shortly settle on a set of provisions that today is known as the Magna Carta.  The full name was the Magna Carta Libertatum that is Medieval Latin for the "Great Charter of Freedoms".      There has been a lot of debate about earlier documents that have been lost to history that defined freedoms in England. The Magna Carta is today seen as a major landmark in personal freedom and against the concept of a Kings divine, God ordered right to rule.   Even Pope Innocent the 3rd entered the debate, siding with the King and annulled the Charter.

The debate here really goes to the root of a larger, very serious debate.   Is the individual sovereign and answerable to God alone and directly?   Think about that for a moment.  Under the US Constitution,  certain rights are God given and not awards from the State.  The power of the Government is the consent of the Governed.   We grant power to the government to maintain civil order.   Government does not hold the ultimate authority.  

And since the Pope entered the Civil Debate.  We can ask the same question in the context of the Church. Is the Church between the individual and God or a supporting element only?

Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Jamaica 1494. This would have been his second trip to the new world.   He declares the land the property of the Spanish Crown.  Here again we can ask the above question.  What was his authority to make such a claim, besides he had the bigger sword?   

In 1640 King Charles the first is having a similar debate. His solution is to dissolve Parliament.   Charles like a long list considered his position to be a divine right.   The people disagreed.  Of the 69 English monarchs dating from the 9th Century,  only Charles the 1st was executed.    The concept of diving right is hard defend.   One Prophet in the Old Testament called out bears to devour some who disputed him.  But Jesus dismissed the Disciples call for judgement.    But there are a couple of cases where folks questioned Moses and they got their minds set right.    The earth opened up on one group.  

A French invasion of Mexico is halted in 1862.   This is the origin of the now popular celebration on the Fifth of May. Similar to St. Patricks day cinco do Myo is more popular in the States than in its original country.  

Lakota Chief Sitting Bull leads his band into Canada in 1877, to avoid conitued harassment by the US Army.   The question that always has to be considered in any discussion of the natives and the Europeans,  is how could a meeting of two very diverse cultures, have been better managed?   Today, political correctness puts all of the blame on the Europeans.  That is completely not fair.   Both sides were highly skilled in politics and warfare prior to the meeting.  With the balance of power strongly tilted in one direction.  

Might does not make right, but the concept has long been applied as long as humanly possible.   In 1886, Workers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.   Co-incidentally both of those words have native origins.    The Workers are marching for an 8-hour work day.   Things get ugly and the Wisconsin National Guard fires on the group.   Seven are confirmed killed.   We can slant that if we want.    The crowd was 14,000 strong and the Guardsman were 250.   The on-going strike has shut down every business in town except one steel mill and that was the goal of the day.     Whether peaceful or not the crowd was using one form of “right by might”   and the Government another.    

To be fair working conditions in 19th century heavy industry were far below what is expected today.    This brings up another subject,   my feed often gets videos on manufacturing processes in the far east and often India, based on clothing and other clues.    They look much like 19th Century America.    Which begs the question, how many of those products make their way to American shelves?   Or the corollary what are the conditions in Eastern factories that can send products here for such a low price? 

Cy Young, pitching for the Boston Americans in 1904, pitches the first perfect game in the modern era of Baseball.   A perfect game is one where no player from the opposing game safely gets on base.   The feat is quite rare, as there have only been 22 in the past 124 years of modern MLB.     The Philadelphia Athletics have moved  a few times.   The longest in Oakland, California.  They are still in California, playing near Sacramento, but after the 2027 season they will move to Las Vegas.   The Americans, played in Boston until 1907 when the name was changed to the Red Stockings.    Today shortened to the Red Sox.   

As part of the 1912 Russian Revolution, the Bolshevik newspaper Pravda was first published.  The outlet remains in print and was the official newspaper of the Central Committee until 1991 and the fall of the Soviet Union.   Pravda means Truth.   It was anything but that.   

We will close with one last Derby story. We mentioned Secretariat earlier, on this day in 1973 he wins the Kentukcy race with a blinding speed of 1:59.4. A record that has yet to be broken.  The closet any other horse has come is Monarchos, in 2001 with a time of 1:59.97. More than a half a second slower.   About two to three lengths. 

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