“Quantity has a quality all its own” attributed to Stalin.

Last weekend, I went to the  vintage car races at the Laguna Seca Racetrack with Malcolm Pearson. (Malcolm is the only person I know who is as crazy about cars as I am.) We went on Friday, a practice only day, because it is cheaper and there is a chance to see all the cars run. I had not been to Laguna Seca since 2005 and it was a shock; both good and bad, but mostly good. When we got there – I want to say bright and early in the morning, but it was dark and overcast with fog – at about  8:15, the first shock was that it cost $70 for the day. I remember it as $40 six years ago. The second shock was the number of entries. It was huge.

At the vintage races – officially the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion – a big part of the joy is being able to walk into the pits. And – in theory – linger. But there was no way we could linger, there were just to many cars – delicious cars of all varieties and ages: little, lithe, Formula Jr. open wheel race cars from the late 50’s, early 60’s; big, honk’n V-8 powered Trans-Am cars from the late 60’s, early 70’s;  little, lithe, sports race cars WITH big, honk’n 427 cubic inch Chevy V-8s – to linger. We walked all day and I don’t think we saw everything.

At first, it was close to orgasmic, although I do think we both calmed down by the end of the day. I think that I had seen one or two or three of every car that was there, but not twenty.

About 1970, I went to a Trans-Am race at Sears Point that I still remember. All the American factories were pouring money into their race cars and the series was full of famous names: Roger Penske’s Sunoco Camaro were the fastest cars, but Roger Foyt’s Mustangs were almost as fast. The two of them battled for the lead for the whole race. It was thrilling. It was magical – if you are into that kind of thing –  and now the cars are back. They are not driven by the same drivers, but, still….

These races – really, these race cars – have two draws for me: they evoke memories of past races, past times watching races back when the drivers were gladiators; and, because they are  race cars and, almost by definition, hand made cars,  they are amazing artifacts. They have the touch of the craftsman; the touch of the artist; the touch of what makes us human.

A couple of days ago, a friend told me that Obama is a Trotskyite. I was taken aback. I’ve had several people tell me that Obama is a Leninist and others tell me that he is a Socialist and still others tell me that he is a Marxist, but this was my first Trotskyite. I can’t get over the suspicion that  they – the Obama namers – think Leninist, Socialist, and Marxist are, roughly, interchangeable, but not Trotskyite.

That seems so specific; I really have no idea what they mean. OK, I am almost positive that it was meant as a slur, but I am at a loss at to exactly what slur. It got me to thinking about the differance between Liberals and Conservatives in their attacks. I know Liberals who will call somebody a fascist but I have never heard a Liberal call somebody a Mussolinist or a Hitlerite. Nazi, yes. But that seems to relate to how somebody acts, like He is such a Nazi about exercise and it is not always even a slur.

One of the things I – we? – did at the Women’s Flat Track Roller Derby was hand my camera around. So we ended up with pictures by Courtney, Michele, and myself and I am not sure what pictures are whose. Some of the pictures from the last post could easily been Michele’s or Courtney’s and not mine. I do know that the following two pictures are, first, Courtney’s ,and, second, Michele’s.

After the latest, wettest spring I can remember and the coolest summer, we finally got some heat. Three days in a row over 80°, whoop de do! Except that the the naked ladies – or belladonnas, but, really, Amaryllis belladonna – a harbinger of late summer are now out. They are striking lily allies from South Africa that I love, but I would love them even more  if we had had a longer summer before they arrived.

And the Red Hot Pokers – really Kniphofia uvaria – are all up and at it. Usually, I think, they bloom earlier than the belladonnas but this year, who knows. Maybe the summer will go through November.

I always thought that the Red Hot Pokers were an Aloe cultivar, but, I now read, they are a native from Madagascar.  Which is very handy because the talk at the San Francisco Succulent Society tonight is on plants of Madagascar so I can probably get all my misconceptions corrected.

I love summer: I love the heat and the smell of the air, the slightly fussy views, the long evenings, and, because I was born in California, the dry hills. I even love the tourists that show up for summer.

A sure sign of summer coming to an end. It is always

But first, some background:

In Wunderlich Park – in Woodside – is an old stable that was built by the Folger family. The same Folgers who made tons of money on Folgers Coffee starting about 1865. Some time after that, like several other very rich people – the Stanfords, the Floods, the Athertons, the Selbys – to get away from the  San Fransisco summer cold and fog, they built an estate on the San Francisco Peninsula.

Part of that Folger estate was this stable designed in 1905 by Schultze & Brown. The very same Brown who, in partnership with John Bakewell Jr., later became famous as the architect of the San Francisco City Hall. The same San Francisco City Hall that has the highest dome west of the Mississippi.

Partially as an aside and partially as one of the points of this post is the strange phenomenon that new stuff, like these stables when they were built, are sort of sleazy and old stuff, like these renovated stables, are very classy – I know, classy, itself, is not a classy word, but you get the point. Think cars, somebody driving a brand new Ferrari is sort of crass, somebody driving a 45 year old Ferrari, less so. Part of it is that a new Ferrari California sells for about $190,000 and a 1963 SWB Ferrari California sold for more than $10,000,000 just a couple of years ago. Of course, at a sales price of over $10,000,000, the 1963 Ferrari is much more ostentatious, but it doesn’t seem that way. End aside and point.

About an hundred years later, another group of rich people – probably richer, really – renovated the lovely stable.

Here is a little more background. In the spring of 2005, Michele and I went to Utah to see the Cathedral in the Desert,

a legendary place that had been underwater – and inaccessible – for about the last 40 years because of the creation of Lake Powell by the evil Glenn Canyon Dam. It was then partially exposed because the lake – reservoir, really – was the lowest it had been since the original flooding. We went to the Bullfrog Marina, rented a boat on Wednesday or Thursday, and spent a couple of days visiting the Cathedral and exploring Lake Powell’s side canyons.

When we returned the boat on Saturday, we were amazed by the number of skiboats and houseboats that had arrived for the weekend.

The line of parked trucks and SUVs, with boat trailers, at the boat ramp was probably a half mile long. These were not the trucks and trailers of rich people, they were the hard gained rewards of Joe the Plumber tradesmen. Plumbers – of course – drywall installers, electricians, printers, machinists: hard working people making it in a society that honors hard work. Weekends, they spent relaxing – well deserved relaxing. Relaxing by buying shit and burning through a huge amount of gas and oil. Around the marina, we could even smell the gas that they were spewing into the reservoir.

So here is the dilemma: take about the same amount of money and give it to a few people and we get a restored stable; give it to alot of people and we get alot of SUVs, and skiboats. Sure, the few rich buy stuff like that – just look at the Monaco harbor on a Formula 1 race day – but, by definition, there are only a few of them. Sooner or later they run out of ski boats or Ferraris to buy and then they start restoring stables. Or buy art.

As a Liberal – even a Libertarian Liberal – I think that people should be paid fairly and the tax burden should be spread alot more evenly than it is now. I also understand that the half mile line of trucks at  Bullfrog Marina on Lake Powell provides alot more good jobs than the Restored Stable in Woodside. But it is worse for the environment. Much worse.