Saturday Six: Peanuts

Image via WikipediaOver at Patrick's Place, Patrick is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Peanuts comic strip with a Saturday Six batch of questions about the beloved comic strip.  Peanuts is not my favorite strip of all time, but I would have to put it in my Top 5 with Calvin and Hobbes, Doonesbury, Bloom County, and The Far Side.  Peanuts was a bit tamer than my other favorites, but could get pretty deep and philosophical at times.

Anyway, on with Patrick's questions:

1. Who is your favorite Peanuts character?

Jeez!  That's like asking what's my favorite Beatles album.  All of them.  I guess I've always been partial to the level-headed, intelligent, unflappable Linus.  Either him or Snoopy and his many alter egos.  I'm also a big fan of Pigpen for some reason.  And the duo of Peppermint Patty and Marcie is intriguing too. 

2. Which Peanuts character is your least favorite?

Patty and Violet, the mean girls who seemed to exist only to make Charlie Brown's life even more miserable.

3. If it were up to you, would Lucy have to let Charlie Brown kick the football?

Yeah, probably just once.  I always thought that a good idea for a strip would have been for Lucy to hold the ball in place just once, but for Charlie Brown to flub the kick.

4. When did you last read a Peanuts comic strip?

Today.  I get a daily email of comic strips from Comics.com.  They rerun old Peanuts strips.  Today's edition is a strip that was first published in 1963.

5. Which of the television movies based on Peanuts was your favorite as a kid?

The Halloween show -- It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.  I especially love the trick-or-treating.  "I got a rock."

6. Should the strip ever be drawn by someone else, even if that person agrees to keep the same values its creator held so dear?

NO!  While that has worked out alright for several long-running strips, I'm against it for Peanuts.  If Charles Schultz had had a successor in mind and worked with him for a while, it might have worked.  Since he didn't -- precisely because he did not want the strip to continue after his death -- I'd say "no."  Just keep rerunning the old ones.

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• Good grief! Peanuts comic strip turns 60 (reuters.com)

Weekend Assignment: History

This week's Weekend Assignment is History...

We don't all live near the site of a battlefield or other world-famous event, but any place has its own history: political, cultural, even natural history. How aware are you of the past of the town, city or state where you live now? Share with us a story of local history.

I actually do live near the site of a battlefield (several, in fact), and I'm very aware of the area's history.  I live in northwest Georgia, just south of Chattanooga, Tennessee.   The region's main moment in the historical spotlight happened nearly 150 years ago during the Civil War.  Chattanooga was an important railroad center, where several lines met that connected most of the South.  There were several battles fought for control of the town and there are historical markers and monuments scattered all over the region.

Braxton Bragg's Confederate Army of Tennessee occupied Chattanooga in the summer of 1863. Union General William Rosecrans sent his Army of the Cumberland around Bragg's flank, threatening Bragg's supply line from Atlanta.  Bragg withdrew from Chattanooga and headed south into Georgia.  The armies met at the Battle of Chickamauga.  The Union army was routed, but withdrew into Chattanooga, occupying the town.  Bragg besieged the town to try to starve the Federals out, but General Ulysses S. Grant arrived with many reinforcements and, after several battles, managed to drive the Confederates out of the area.

There are many, many interesting stories and anecdotes that occurred during this period.  It is hard to pick just one, but one of my favorites involves John Wilder.

Before the war, John Wilder was a successful businessman.  He ran a foundry in Ohio and invented many hydraulic machines.  When the war broke out, he joined the army as a private, but was quickly elected captain by the other men (a very common practice at the time.)  Although he wasn't a professional soldier, he advanced quickly and was a colonel within a year.

When Rosecrans's army first advanced on Chattanooga, Wilder's Lightning Brigade was at the vanguard of the attack.  He took a position on Stringer's Ridge, across the Tennessee River from Chattanooga, and began shelling the town.  His battery, commanded by Eli Lilly, who would later become very famous as the founder of a large drug company, succeeded in sinking two steamboats and causing a great deal of panic in the town.

Wilder settled in Tennessee after the war.  He built and operated the first two blast furnaces in the South at Rockwood, Tennessee.  Then he established an ironworks in Chattanooga to manufacture rails for railroads.  In 1871, he was elected mayor of Chattanooga.  That has to be an unprecedented achievement -- from shelling a town to mayor of the same town in just a few short years.

Rearranging the Furniture

I've been having a hard time keeping one blog updated, so the logical thing to do (as I saw it) was to restart my other blogs.  I just couldn't stand the hodgepodge of varying topics here, so my Labor Day weekend project was to separate out some of these topics into other blogs.

All the Civil War posts here will eventually be moved back to Civil War Meanderings.

All of my posted photos will eventually be moved back to Foto Frenzy.

I'm going to keep most of the dated sports posts, including most of the NASCAR stuff, here, but the informational posts and all sports stuff from here on out will be posted on a new blog, The Southern Sports Retort.  (I had a hard time coming up with a name that was not already being used on Blogger.)

I'm not sure what direction this blog, my mothership, will take.  Hopefully I can get re-energized and start posting about news and politics again along with some miscellaneous topics.  Of course, any political posts I make here will be crossposted at The Blue Voice.

A good deal of the transferring of posts has been done and should be finished by the end of the week. It may not be strictly kosher to be moving these posts all around, but, in the long run, I think it will be better to have all this stuff divided up.  We'll see what happens.

150 Years Ago: The Presidential Campaign of 1860

Image via Wikipedia

Here at the old Blogspot, I've been doing a series of posts, the Civil War Calendar, that examines the events that happened 150 years ago to lead to the Civil War.  This post will wrap up the series for a while because everything ground to a halt during the summer and fall of 1860 with everyone looking forward to the presidential election in November.

Four candidates were vying for the office.  With the Democratic Party split in two (and with two Democratic candidates -- Stephen Douglas and John Breckinridge), Republican Abraham Lincoln looked like a sure bet, but it would take a lot of work to get him to the needed 152 electoral votes.  Lincoln would not even appear on the ballot in ten Southern states and would need to sweep most of the remaining states to keep the election out of the House.

This task would be complicated by the presence of the Constitutional Union Party and its candidate John Bell.  The party, mostly comprised of ancient Whigs and Know-Nothings, could not hope to win -- it was a party of moderates in a nation of extremists -- but it could play a spoiler role and keep Lincoln from winning.  They took no stand on the issues of the day.  Their party platform pledged simply for the Constitution, the Union and enforcement of the laws.

It seems rather quaint and odd now, but candidates did not do much campaigning back then.  They were expected to stay at home and let others do the work of campaigning for them.  They would appear statesmanlike, letting who and what they were speak for them, giving very few speeches to muddy the water, feigning ignorance of the excesses of their supporters.  150 years ago today, on August 8, 1860, there was a grand celebration in Springfield, Illinois, to celebrate the nomination of Lincoln.  Lincoln himself appeared just briefly, speaking only a very few words:  "It has been my purpose, since I have been placed in my present position, to make no speeches...I appear upon the ground here at this time only for the purpose of affording myself the best opportunity of seeing you and enabling you to see me...You will kindly let me be silent."  Then he rode away on horseback.

Douglas broke the mold, crisscrossing the country North and South to openly vie for votes, presenting himself as the only candidate strong enough to keep the Black Republican out of the White House and save the country from disunion.  Douglas was a formidable opponent and at the outset of the campaign appeared to have a chance of winning eight Northern states and one or two border states.

The Republicans met this challenge with vigor.  Lincoln would stay silent, but every other party leader was on the stump delivering an estimated 50,000 speeches.  It was the party of youth and youthful energy with a tremendous edge in first-time voters.  They organized themselves into "Wide-Awake" clubs and marched in grand torchlight parades, singing the party theme song, "Ain't You Glad You Joined the Republicans?"

The Democratic Buchanan administration would hand the Republicans a key issue to exploit -- corruption.  A House investigating committee compiled a large volume of frauds, graft and bribery of one of the most corrupt administrations in U.S. history.  It came off the presses in June 1860, and an abridged edition was quickly compiled and distributed by the Republicans for the campaign.  Some later Republican administrations would prove to be just as corrupt, but in 1860 the young party had an unsullied reputation and they were led by the man already known as "Honest Abe."

The Constitutional Unionists would shoot themselves in the foot.  Campaigning in the South, trying to prove themselves as dedicated to Southern rights as the Democrats, they embraced a federal slave code for the territories.  This led many Northern conservative ex-Whigs to vote for Lincoln as the lesser of two evils.

The key questions were:  If Lincoln were to win, would the Southern states follow through on their ever-increasing threats to secede?  The Republicans saw this as a bluff, an idle threat.  What would the federal government do if secession became a reality?  Douglas was the only one to address this issue, promising to "hang every man higher than Haman who would attempt by force to resist the execution of any provision of the Constitution which our fathers made and bequeathed to us."  Breckinridge, the most likely candidate for anyone wishing a breakup of the Union, challenged "the bitterest enemy I may have on earth to point out an act, to disclose an utterance, to reveal a thought of mine hostile to the Constitution and the Union of the States."

The election would turn into one of the strangest in American history, morphing into two separate contests:  Lincoln vs. Douglas in the North, and Breckinridge vs. Bell in the South.

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• 150 Years Ago: the 1860 Republican Convention (fdtate.blogspot.com)
• A Civil War Calendar Update: The Constitutional Union Convention (fdtate.blogspot.com)
• A Civil War Calendar Update: The 1860 Democratic Convention, Take Two (fdtate.blogspot.com)

A Civil War Calendar Update: The 1860 Democratic Convention, Take Two

Image via Wikipedia

I was trying to keep my series of Civil War Calendar posts updated on a timely basis, but a haphazard Internet connection and other obstacles prevented me from posting.  The good news is that this very late post will get the series up-to-date and just one more post -- a preview of the election of 1860 -- will wrap up the series until November, when events will quickly spiral out of control.

On June 18, 1860, the Democratic Party reconvened in Baltimore, Maryland.  The first convention, at Charleston, South Carolina, in April, had broken up over the ideology of front-runner Stephen A. Douglas, with many delegates walking out.  Pro-Douglas supporters went to work in several Southern states, getting the state conventions to name new delegations -- friendlier to Douglas -- to replace the ones that had walked out.  Everyone was present now in Baltimore, but which delegates were entitled to seats?

The problem was passed to the credentials committee.  From Bruce Catton's The Coming Fury...

It would take the credentials committee three days to wrestle with this problem, and until the wrestling ended, the convention could do nothing but wait, its collective temperature rising hour by hour. Douglas men paraded the streets with brass bands, pausing when the spirit moved them to listen to stump speeches; Southern die-hards, in turn, had a way of gathering in front of the Gilmore House, where (William) Yancey was staying, for stump speeches of their own; and nothing that was said or done at any of these meetings served to promote harmony. At the Douglas meetings, held often enough on the steps of the home of the eminent Reverdy Johnson, former Senator, former Attorney General, and a leader of the "moderates" on the slavery question, orators shouted that devotion to Douglas was the only true test of Democratic fidelity. At the Gilmore House, in turn, the Douglas men were denounced as abolitionists in disguise, and Yancey cried that these Doulas leaders were selfish men who, ostrich-like, "buried their heads in the sands of squatter soveriegnty" and thereby exposed their anti-slavery posteriors. On the fringes of these meetings there were often a number of fist fights.

Ellipsis Photo Shoot: Cemetaries

My access to the Internet lately has been a little haphazard at best so I haven't been able to post here much in the last couple of months. I also haven't been able to participate in Carly's weekly photo shoots either, but I thought I'd give this one a try. This week's topic is Cemeteries...

CEMETERIES... Creepy? Or Peaceful? John Scalzi posed this question back when he was the host of the Monday Photo Shoot, and I thought this might be a good time to revisit the subject! By the way, CEMETERIES doesn't have to be limited to what traditionally comes to mind when we think of this subject, an auto wrecking yard might also be considered a CEMETERY. Use your imagination with this one.

She's referring back to the old AOL Journals days (my first foray into the exciting world of blogging). John Scalzi was our esteemed webmaster at the time. And I think this might have been the photo I submitted when the topic came up back then...



Yes, that weird collection of rocks sticking up out of the ground is actually a cemetery. It's the Dyer family cemetery, located in the Chickamauga Battlefield. The cemetery predates the Civil War and if there was ever any writing on the headstones it's long since faded away.

These other two photos (of a much more recent vintage) are not technically pictures of cemeteries, but headstones at the cemetery where my father- and mother-in-law are buried. I'm sure that there is a compelling story behind this one...



This might be the grave of General Andrew Jackson, but it's not the grave of the Andrew Jackson. The famous one is buried at his estate, The Hermitage, in Nashville, Tennessee, not on Sand Mountain in Alabama, where this photo was taken.

A Civil War Calendar Update: The Constitutional Union Convention

Image via Wikipedia

Due to financial concerns, I haven't been online much lately and have failed to keep up with some of my self-assigned projects.  One such project is the Civil War Calendar, a look at events that took place 150 years ago in the lead-up to the Civil War.

The 150th anniversary of the Constitutional Union Convention took place while I was still plugging away online on a regular basis, but I somehow missed it.  The convention took place in May 1860, about a week before the Republican Convention in Chicago, and almost certainly influenced the events there.

On May 9, 1860, a ragtag group -- remnants of the old Whig Party and a few Know-Nothings -- met in Baltimore.  They called themselves the United States Constitutional Union Convention, and nominated John Bell of Tennessee as their candidate for president.  The distinguished orator Edward Everett of Massachusetts was named their vice-presidential candidate.

There was no way Bell could be elected.  He and the party stood for moderation at a time when the nation was quickly dividing into extremes.  The hope was that he would win enough votes to prevent anyone else from winning, throwing the election to the House of Representatives, where cooler heads might come to a reasonable compromise.

The convention denounced political party platforms as frauds, then adopted a simple one of their own which pledged to uphold the Constitution, the Union and the Enforcement of the Laws.  The convention adjourned without a single mention of slavery in the territories or the fugitive slave laws, but John Brown was mentioned a couple of times in passing.

Bell, a wealthy slaveowner, was 64 years old.  He had spent much of his life in politics, beginning as a Democrat before a falling out with Andrew Jackson in the fight over the Bank of the United States.  He served in the House of Representatives from 1827 to 1841, and served as Speaker of the House from 1834 to 1835.  Bell did a brief stint as Secretary of War in 1841 under Presidents Harrison and Tyler, then served two terms as a senator from 1847 to 1859.

Bell was very popular in the border states, and his candidacy had an impact the following week in Chicago at the Republican Convention.  William Seward, the front-runner for the Republican nomination, was weakest in the states where Bell was strongest, and the Republicans, who needed almost a clean sweep of the Northern states, finally chose Abraham Lincoln as their nominee, deciding that he was the more electable candidate.

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• 150 Years Ago: the 1860 Republican Convention (fdtate.blogspot.com)

"OK Sarah"

Check out singer/songwriter Wesley Ellis. He's working on his first album, "Broke Is the New Black" and is currently competing in the 2nd Toyota Music MySpace contest.  If you like this too, go there and help spread the word.

NASCAR: NSCS -- Charlotte: Coca-Cola 600 Results

Image by jerbec via Flickr

Kurt Busch got a fast final pit stop, then blew past the cars that stayed out, and held off Jamie McMurray in the closing laps to win the Coca-Cola 600 Sunday night.  Busch is the seventh driver to win the Sprint All-Star Race and the 600, which are both held at Charlotte Motor Speedway on consecutive weekends, in the same season.

Like the day's earlier race in Indianapolis, this one came down to cars owned by Roger Penske and Chip Ganassi.  Ganassi driver Dario Franchitti prevailed in the Indy 500.  Busch beat McMurray to the line by 0.737 seconds to give the Coca-Cola 600 win to Penske.

Busch led twelve times for a race-high 252 laps, including the final 19.  It was his second victory of the season, the 22nd of his career and his first at Charlotte in 20 points races.

On Lap 167 (of 400), Jimmie Johnson got loose and hit the outside wall coming out of Turn Four.  Denny Hamlin damaged his car by cutting into the grass to avoid him.  After the yellow flag flew, Kyle Busch collided with Brad Keselowski on pit road, damaging the right front of his car.  The younger Busch was also cited for speeding on pit road.

Johnson's troubles were not over.  He got loose again on Lap 272, this time coming out of Turn Two, and slid down the track hard into the inside wall.  His crew worked hard to replace most of the front end of the car, and he came back on the track over 30 laps down to finish 37th.

Kyle Busch rallied to finish third, but got an earful from a frustrated Jeff Burton after the race.  He took it three-wide on the final restart, driving between Clint Bowyer on the inside and Burton on the outside.  He made contact with Burton, pushing him out of the groove and cutting down a tire.  Burton would fall back to finish 25th.

Mark Martin finished fourth.  David Reutimann, last year's race winner, finished fifth.  (Race results)

A scary moment on pit road:  On a late-race stop, Tony Stewart clipped Greg Biffle's rear tire carrier Kevin McDowell with the rear of his car while leaving his pit.  McDowell was taken to the infield care center with a limp.

Kevin Harvick finished eleventh and lost ground in the series points standings.  He now leads Kyle Busch by just 29 points.  Matt Kenseth (-117) remains in third.  Jeff Gordon (-138) climbed two spots to fourth after finishing sixth.  Denny Hamlin (-166) remains in fifth.  Kurt Busch (-172) climbed three spots to sixth.  Johnson (-204) dropped three spots to seventh.  Ryan Newman got back into the Top 12, replacing Martin Truex Jr.

Ellipsis Photo Shoot: Ready, Set, Go!

Carly's latest photo shoot at Ellipsis is action oriented...

EMPS #91: Get READY, get SET, GO! Show us something this week, that is READY, something that is SET, or something on the GO! Or, if you like, put them all together! GET READY, GET SET, GO BE PHOTOGRAPHERS!

I've mentioned before that this year marks my grandson's first foray into the exciting world of Dixie Youth Baseball. With the camera set on continuous shooting mode, here's a sequence of shots of him taking some batting practice back in March.

READY





SET





GO!

Oops!  False start!  It was a swing and a miss.  At this point, so early in the season, he didn't really know what he was doing, but, if you click the photos to make them bigger, you can tell by the expression on his face that he was really determined.

Camera set on Shutter Priority at 1/1000 sec.
f/5.6
ISO: 400

Check out Ellipsis for more interpretations of this theme and the next assignment.

NASCAR: NNS -- Charlotte: Tech-Net Auto Service 300 Results

Image via Wikipedia

Kyle Busch rallied from two laps down and held off Brad Keselowski at the finish to win Saturday's Nationwide Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway, the Tech-Net Auto Service 300.  It was Busch's second consecutive series win, his fifth of the season, and his sixth at CMS, tying him with Mark Martin for most series wins at the track.

Busch made an unscheduled stop on Lap 49 to check out a potential tire problem, then was caught speeding exiting pit road.  That put him two laps down in 32nd place.

Busch made up a lot of ground by staying out while everyone else completed a round of green flag stops, then battled to stay in front of the leader Kasey Kahne to stay on the lead lap.  Kahne was forced to make an unscheduled stop of his own on Lap 91, relinquishing an eleven-second lead to change batteries.  That put him two laps down.  He would finish 26th.

On Lap 138, Trevor Bayne hit the wall, then spun out trying to get onto pit road.  That brought out the caution and sent the leaders into the pits.  It was a fast stop for Busch.  He entered in fourth and left with the lead -- a lead he would not relinquish.

Bayne and Scott Lagasse Jr. both hit the wall on Lap 196 to set up a green-white-checkered finish.  Busch held off Keselowski on the final lap for the win.  Joey Logano finished third, followed by Justin Allgaier and Ryan Newman.  (Race results)

The race went 203 laps, three past the scheduled distance.

For the next three weeks, the Nationwide Series will be at different tracks than the Cup Series.  Although Busch now trails Keselowski by just one point for the lead in the Nationwide Series points standings, he'll take the next three weeks off to concentrate on the Cup Series.  Kevin Harvick (-94) is third, followed by Carl Edwards (-257) and Justin Allgaier (-265).

NASCAR: Charlotte Preview

Image by The U.S. Army via Flickr

Sunday is a big day for auto racing fans.  NASCAR ends the day with its longest race of the year, the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.  Earlier in the day, there's the biggest race in America, the Indianapolis 500.  If you want to get up extremely early -- around 7:30 a.m. ET -- you can even catch a Formula One race, the Turkish Grand Prix.

The NASCAR schedule is mostly normal -- no Truck Series race, but a Saturday afternoon Nationwide race, the Tech-Net Auto Service 300 (2 p.m. ET, ABC).  The Sunday evening Sprint Cup race, the Coca-Cola 600 (5:45 p.m. ET, Fox) is a slight twist to the schedule.  Another twist is that qualifying was held on Thursday instead of the normal Friday.

Ryan Newman captured his ninth career pole at Charlotte Motor Speedway in the Thursday session.  He turned a lap of 28.793 seconds (187.546 mph), barely edging Kurt Busch's 28.832-second lap.  It was Newman's 46th career pole, tying him with Junior Johnson for tenth on the all-time list, and his first of the year, extending his streak of seasons with at least one pole to ten.

Newman has won three times from the pole, but is still looking for his first Cup win at the track.  Busch, who will be making his third front row start of the season, is looking to become the seventh All-Star Race winner to win the 600 in the same season.

Martin Truex Jr. will start third, followed by Kasey Kahne and Jimmie Johnson.  Series points leader Kevin Harvick rolls off in the 23rd starting position.  Brad Keselowski qualified 37th, but will have to start in the rear of the field in a backup car.  He spun coming out of Turn Four and hit the wall on his second qualifying lap.  Reed Sorenson, Max Papis, David Stremme and Mike Bliss failed to qualify for the 600.  (Race lineup)

Qualifying for the Nationwide race is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. ET Saturday.  Two Cup practice sessions are scheduled for 11:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., followed by the Tech-Net Auto Service 300 at 2 p.m.  The weather might throw that schedule into disarray.  Scattered showers and thundershowers are forecast throughout Saturday, but should leave the area by early Sunday morning.

NASCAR: NSCS -- Charlotte: Sprint All-Star Race Results

Image by fdtate via Flickr

After he won Friday night's Truck Series race at Charlotte, Kyle Busch said that he made his truck better by hitting the wall.  "I made it where I could drive it.  I knocked some 'tight' into it."  Perhaps brother Kurt did the same thing in Saturday night's Sprint All-Star Race.  He hit the wall twice during the second and third segments, then rallied to take the win in the fourth and final segment.

There were three crashes in the final ten-lap segment in which only green-flag laps counted.  After a ten-minute break, the yellow flag came out and the field pulled off of pit road.  Still under yellow, the field re-entered pit road for a mandatory four-tire stop.  Denny Hamlin had the preferred pit at the end of pit road thanks to his crew winning the Sprint Pit Crew Challenge Wednesday.  Hamlin and JGR teammate Kyle Busch beat Jimmie Johnson, who won segments two and three, off of pit road and lined up for the restart on the front row.

But Hamlin spun the tires on the restart, stacking up the outside lane behind him.  At the same time, Joey Logano made a move to the inside of Johnson and got shoved into the grass heading off into Turn One.  Jamie McMurray got into the rear of Mark Martin and got him loose as Logano swerved back onto the track and got into him from the side to finish the job.  Martin was turned into the outside wall, triggering the worst accident of the night, collecting about half the field in the pile-up.

Hamlin and the younger Busch tangled on the second attempt to start the final segment.  Hamlin pulled a little ahead, but Kyle made a run on the outside.  Hamlin moved up to block his teammate, and keep coming up until Busch had nowhere to go but into the wall.  As they tangled, the older Busch (Kurt) and Johnson drove by them on the inside.  The second wreck came a short time later.  Kyle blew a tire and hit the wall, then bounced down into Kasey Kahne, turning him into the wall and ending both their nights.

Kyle Busch was furious that his teammate Hamlin ran him up into the wall.  When he left the track, he drove, not to his hauler or the garage, but straight to Hamlin's hauler.  He headed inside to wait for Hamlin to finish the race.  Team owner Joe Gibbs headed to the hauler to intervene and the three ironed out their differences in a 20-minute meeting.

On the next restart with two laps to go, Hamlin drove back up with Johnson and the two raced side-by-side for second.  Hamlin crowded Johnson low, then, when he pulled ahead, his car sucked Johnson's rear around, sending him on a wild ride through the infield.

One final restart:  Kurt Busch pulled ahead.  Martin Truex Jr. stayed behind him on the outside to finish second, followed by Logano and Hamlin.  Tony Stewart was buried in the field most of the night, but survived the big wreck and made a good move on the final restart to finish fifth.  (Race results)

There were no points on the line -- just money (over $1 million for the winner) and glory -- so the point standings stay like they were last week after Dover.

Truex made the All-Star Race by winning the preliminary event, the Sprint Showdown.  He battled Greg Biffle and finally passed him with six laps to go in the 40-lap sprint.  The duel was virtually worthless; the top two finishers made it into the All-Star Race.  Carl Edwards also made it in by winning the fan vote.

The most entertaining part of the Showdown was watching the inspired driving of Regan Smith.  He took it three and sometimes four wide, forcing his car through openings that didn't seem wide enough.  Smith's day ended when Juan Montoya came up the track into him and took them both out.  The wreck seemed to be all Montoya's fault, but, in the post-wreck interview, he cast the blame on Smith.  Montoya seemed to think that Smith was at the front of the field (they were battling for fourth at the time) because the lineup had been set by the qualifying order draw.  Smith got up front the same way Montoya did:  by driving there.  Montoya seemed especially peeved that Smith was racing with him -- why didn't he just pull over and let him by?

Jeff Burton didn't have enough to run Truex and Biffle down at the end.  He finished third, just missing the All-Star Race.  Paul Menard finished fourth; Marcus Ambrose fifth.  (Race results)

Round Robin Photo Challenge: Statues

The latest Round Robin Photo Challenge is all about statues.

Statues - photograph a statue of some sort. It can be as large as the Sphinx in Egypt, or as small as a bowling trophy.

When I win the lottery and take my trip around the world, I'll stop off in Egypt and get some photos of the Sphinx. Until then, some photos taken a little closer to home will have to suffice.

The Gordon-Lee Mansion is in the town of Chickamauga, Georgia, south of the Civil War battlefield.  Union General William Rosecrans briefly used the house as his headquarters before the Battle of Chickamauga.  The statue below is from the mansion grounds. 




Another Civil War statue.  These figures are on the top of the New York Peace Monument at Point Park atop Lookout Mountain.  It's the only Civil War monument I know of that has a statue of both a Union and Confederate soldier.  They're shaking hands; a Northern gesture of conciliation.




Three statues are around the Georgia Monument at the Chickamauga battlefield, one for each branch of service -- infantry, artillery and cavalry.  Here's the infantry statue in front of the state seal.




And here's some public art on Market Street in downtown Chattanooga.  I guess these would qualify as statues.  They're two of the three figures that make up "Pathos Sweet Lost and Found" by J. Aaron Alderman.

Check the Round Robin blog to participate in this challenge, to get in on the next challenge, or to see what the other participants have come up with.

NASCAR: NSCS -- Charlotte: All-Star Lineups

It's all-star weekend in NASCAR.

The main event is the Sprint All-Star Race (9 p.m. ET, Speed).  It's open to anyone who has won a race this season or last, past Cup champions and previous winners of the event.

Eighteen drivers are in so far, including all the Hendrick, Joe Gibbs, and Stewart-Haas cars.  Penske has two of his three cars in.  Roush Fenway, Earnhardt-Ganassi, Childress, Waltrip, and Petty all have one car each in the field.  Bobby Labonte, in because he's a past champion, is representing TRG Motorsports.  Brian Vickers qualified for the event but is unable to compete due to blood clots;  Red Bull was allowed to substitute Casey Mears for the race.

Qualifying for the All-Star Race was rained out Friday.  The race lineup was set by the pool to determine the qualifying order, putting Kurt Busch on the pole and Joey Logano on the front row beside him.  (Race lineup)

Three other drivers will be added to the rear of the field - the winner and second-place finisher of tonight's first race, the Sprint Showdown and the winner of the fan vote.

The Sprint Showdown (7 p.m. ET, Speed) is open to all the drivers who are not already in the All-Star Race.   Some good drivers will be trying to race their way in, including Carl Edwards, Greg Biffle, Juan Montoya and Jeff Burton.

Qualifying for the Sprint Showdown was also rained out.  They were four cars from being finished with Montoya holding down the pole when the rain came Friday.  The rainout moved Montoya back to the 14th starting position and gave David Ragan and Max Papis the front row.  (Race lineup)

The winner of the fan vote will be announced after the Showdown is over.