Today is both Opal Armstrong Zwicky’s college graduation day — 🎓 that’s a mortarboard — and also Kentucky Derby day — 🏇🏼 that’s a jockey on horseback. It also seems to be Rain Day, in both Pittsburgh and Louisville. In any case, two occasions packed with sentiment for me.
(Opal’s graduation from Pitt is straightforward on the sentiment front, but the Derby might need some explanation: Ann Walcutt Daingerfield (later Zwicky) was born — to a celebrated family of owners, breeders, and trainers of thoroughbreds — on Derby Day in 1937, and her father, Keene Daingerfield, ended his working life as the senior state steward for thoroughbred racing in the commonwealth of Kentucky, serving as a judge overseeing racing at both Keeneland in Lexington and Churchill Downs in Louisville. Note: Ann died in 1985, Keene in 1993.)
I hope to post separately about today’s Derby and about my odd long-ago life in the elite social world of central Kentucky and in the complex culture of thoroughbred racing. But today I bring you something completely different, an especially fine Bizarro cartoon, one that comes with a sting.
The 4/30 Bizarro “Chief Petty Officer” (to which Wayno gave the alternative title “Pulling Rank”):
After years, the thin-skinned injustice collector extracts his revenge (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are only 2 in this strip, and they’re easy to find — see this Page)
My comment on Facebook when Wayno posted this cartoon:
— And this is, who would’ve thought it, a political cartoon. A pointed one.
