This is a place for me to express my thoughts on racing, the environment, science, politics, and whatever else might cross my wandering mind.
It will be an overflow of random ideas, reflections, notes and quotes to be enjoyed by those of you who take the time to read it.
Thanks for stopping by and I'll see you down the road...
Peace,
10.23.06 A BREAK IN THE PHAR LAP MYSTERY
For those of you that follow horse racing, you might find some interest in this recent news about the death of Phar Lap,
who is arguably the best race horse to ever set foot on Australian soil. And while he is often referred to as "Australia's Wonder Horse," it should be noted
that Phar Lap was in fact born in Timaru, New Zealand. Anyway, it had long been suspected the he had been poisened,
the movie portrayed it, but they now have scientific proof of his poisoning.
It seems the names of the responsible parties will go unanswered. I know most of the people responsible for his death have probably been dead for a
long time, but it's wrong that they never paid for their crimes. If you want to see more about the story of Phar Lap go to this site
or rent the movie, it's a great story not just about a horse, but about the young Tommy Woodcock who loved him.
Speaking of great race horses, the fact that the doctors saved Barbaro keeps me wishing
they could have saved Ruffian. If you don't know who Ruffian is, she is an undefeated thoroughbred filly who lived and died in the 1970s and in her short career captured
the hearts of people around the world. Walter Farley once said that she was the only horse on earth that came close to his famous fictional horse The Black Stallion.
Ruffian is also the only non-human on Sports Illustrated's list of the top 100 female athletes of the century.
Read more about Ruffian here.
Both true champions, the thoroughbred racing world will never be the same.
10.10.06 THE HOSTESS RACE DIVAS HIT UP THE VEGAS STRIP!
Last Tuesday I had an appearance in Vegas with my fellow Hostess Race Divas-- IRL's Danica Patrick and NHRA's Melanie Troxel-- to promote the
2007 Hostess Race Divas Calendar.
Danica and I were both racing at Texas Motor Speedway in June so we had an ESPN appearance together there, but Melanie was racing somewhere else
so this is the first time since we launched the campaign that all three of us were together. After the autograph session Danica had to fly home to
Phoenix but Melanie and I went out with some of the folks at Hostess and rode the Big Shot
at the top of the Stratosphere. It's a ride that catapults you to 1,081 feet at a force of 4G's and then you freefall back down to the top of the building. It was a thrill,
but I think it might have taken a few years off the end of my life. Later we went and played some craps and lucky me I walked away with some of the Bellagio's money. The night before I did the same
to the Hard Rock, so overall Vegas was good to me.
After Vegas I headed to Los Angeles for some business meetings. I attended my first fashion show-- Gen Art's Fresh Faces of Fashion-- and did my first red carpet walk. It really
cracked me up because of course I did not expect any of the media to know who I was and this one photographer was trying to be so polite and asked, "I'm sorry,
I haven't watched NASCAR in a while, can you spell your name for me?" Trust me, this guy was very LA and I think it's safe to say he has NEVER watched
a stock car race in his entire life, but I thought it was really sweet how he was trying not to hurt my feelings. I went to some
of the Hollywood hotspots-- Koi (THE place to have sushi in LA), Skybar at the Mondrian Hotel, Chateau Marmont (where John Belushi had his last party and Jim Morrison lived in the late 60s), and the very exclusive Hyde Lounge
, the place where the Hollywood celebrities go to see and be seen. I was surprised at how small Hyde was, it only accomadates 100 patrons. It was entertaining to see
all the paparazzi waiting anxiously outside to get their shots for the tabloids, what a weird job. Singer and poet Henry Rollins once wrote of the strange
existence that is the Hollywood scene:
"If Darwin were alive today, he'd treat this town like the Galapagos Islands and study us all from a bungalow at the Chateau Marmont."
It was fun to be back in the land of velvet ropes, guest lists, movie stars, and $12 cocktails but it's good to be back home. Let's get back to racing.
Peace, Leilani
9.01.06 STEVE IRWIN, conservationist. 1962-2006
9.01.06 A BEAUTIFUL STORY
This is the remarkable story about a father and son. Watch this beautiful video
about Team Hoyt Racing. A glimpse of the remarkable father-son bond of Dick and Rick Hoyt, and their inspirational journey together in a triathlon and
life itself. The goal of Team Hoyt is to integrate the physically challenged into everyday life. One way to accomplish this is to educate the able-bodied,
making them more aware of the issues that the disabled face every day. Another is by actively helping the disabled to participate in activities
that would otherwise be inaccessible to them. Team Hoyt targets both of these areas.A great story that needed to be shared, enjoy.
You can make a difference in this world by supporting clean energy. Start by supporting green power in your area, and if you live in North Carolina, you can sign up for North Carolina Green Power-- it's tax deductable.
8.21.06 A LONG LONG WAY TO GO
Ladies, we all know we have a long way to go, but this really makes me angry.
I just got off the phone with Mary Corriveau, City Manager of Watertown, New York. She was an incredibly nice lady and must be extremely patient to be working with men like
Timothy LaBouf. In the letter he sent to Mary Lambert, firing her after 54 years of teaching Sunday school at the First Baptist Church, he quoted the first epistle to Timothy:
"A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man;
she must be silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve."
It appears this man is stuck in the 1950s when this was the advice that Housekeeping Monthly gave to women as The Good Wife's Guide.
The scary thing is, he is not just the pastor at the church, he is a city council member. Somebody please get
this guy out of public office!
Keeping in mind that Tim thinks women should remain silent, I gathered all of Tim's contact information so you, like me, can let Tim know how you feel.
You can leave him a message on his work phone at 315-788-7363 (he has stopped answering his phone recently for some reason... hmmm?), his email address
is tklabouf@msn.com, the church's email is
fbcwatertown@yahoo.com and finally you can leave a message on the
church's blog
(I'm not kidding the church really has a blog).
Numerous media organizations covering this story have attempted to reach Mr. LaBouf and his church with no response. It appears that you are now the one that has become silent, doesn't it pastor?
As a "silent woman" I have reached almost 2 million visitors through my website and I have to tell you something Mr. LaBouf, as much as I would like to "obey" your interpretation of the bible,
I'm just not the silent type.
Good luck with your sermon on Sunday,
Leilani
7.20.06 CITIZENS OF THE WORLD
Sorry I haven't checked in for a while, things have been... hectic. I have been to San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa, Atlanta, Charlotte, and Indianapolis in the
past couple weeks and things are not slowing down. I have been doing sponsor appearances, testing, racing-- leaving me with five days in the entire month of July
where I will sleep in my home in Charlotte, North Carolina. I am enjoying every minute, I have a great team and a great sponsor and a great race car and I don't have a single complaint.
I am so thankful for all the wonderful people I have met, and all the beautiful new places I have visited. Life is being good to me... but I am a bit worried about
the situation for the rest of the world...
The war, a conflict that no doubt has been going on for hundreds of years, has escalated in the past week and the latest headline I read had 500,000 people displaced in Lebanon.
There are 25,000 Americans there and only 450 have been shipped home so far.
Besides the situation between Israel and Lebanon, we've got thousands of troops over in Iraq and I hope that each and every one of those soldiers make it home to their families, but I know that some of them will not. Sometimes the world
can be so daunting, the news so horrific, the scenes so devastating that sometimes you would rather not look at it. You would rather turn a cold shoulder to the headlines and look
the other way. But due to our advances in communication and travel, the world feels smaller every day, and what now seems a war so very far away, could some time very soon end up in our backyard. I do
not have to remind you about the last time the war ended up being fought on our soil, the day that changed the world forever. I hope that never happens again, but I worry that it could.
While the masses in America distract themselves with news about which celebrities are too skinny and where Brad and Angelina are... the world in other places is filled with chaos, poverty, and
deep rooted anger. We need to find a way to deal with our differences. We need to accept that different people believe in different gods, or no god at all. That's okay. We don't have to agree,
we just have to learn to live with each other. We need to stop spending all our energy on fighting. As Will Ferrell said in Anchorman, agree to disagree.
Unfortunately, some of the people on the planet are not so willing to overlook our differences. They don't seem to be the kind of people that you can reason with, so what do we do?
Is there no solution to the conflict? Is violence the only answer, do we play for keeps?
We need to start caring not only for each other but for our Earth. When I was getting my degree in biology at the University of California one of my textbooks was written
by a man named Al Gore. His movie
An Inconvenient Truth received three standing ovations at the Sundance Film Festival. That is huge. The movie is a very scary, very real truth.
We need to change how we are treating our Earth. It is not a giant garbage can, we need to start recycling with a capital R. We need to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. We need
to function on renewable energy sources. We need to change our entire approach to living on this planet. I wish I could be more specific on HOW we can do this. I am sure there are many brilliant
minds mulling over these things-- like these guys. But how long will it take us to find solutions? And will it be soon enough?
In his review of Gore's film, renowned movie critic Roger Ebert said in his review:
"In 39 years, I have never written these words in a movie review, but here they are: You owe it to yourself to see this film.
If you do not, and you have grandchildren, you should explain to them why you decided not to."Read his full review here.
I am just a girl in North Carolina who drives around in circles all day and no doubt, my opinions are no better than anyone elses.
My blogs on these subjects of war, politics, and the environment are just an outlet for me to let some of my inner thoughts out about things that I think are really important. Things that I think about
while I am sitting on airplanes trying to pass the time, like right now. I do not pretend to have any of the answers, mainly I am just asking the questions.
For those of you that follow horse racing, you might find some interest in this recent news about the death of Phar Lap, who is arguably the best race horse to ever set foot on Australian soil. And while he is often referred to as "Australia's Wonder Horse," it should be noted that Phar Lap was in fact born in Timaru, New Zealand. Anyway, it had long been suspected the he had been poisened, the movie portrayed it, but they now have scientific proof of his poisoning. It seems the names of the responsible parties will go unanswered. I know most of the people responsible for his death have probably been dead for a long time, but it's wrong that they never paid for their crimes. If you want to see more about the story of Phar Lap go to this site or rent the movie, it's a great story not just about a horse, but about the young Tommy Woodcock who loved him.
Speaking of great race horses, the fact that the doctors saved Barbaro keeps me wishing they could have saved Ruffian. If you don't know who Ruffian is, she is an undefeated thoroughbred filly who lived and died in the 1970s and in her short career captured the hearts of people around the world. Walter Farley once said that she was the only horse on earth that came close to his famous fictional horse The Black Stallion. Ruffian is also the only non-human on Sports Illustrated's list of the top 100 female athletes of the century. Read more about Ruffian here
.
Last Tuesday I had an appearance in Vegas with my fellow Hostess Race Divas-- IRL's Danica Patrick and NHRA's Melanie Troxel-- to promote the 2007 Hostess Race Divas Calendar. Danica and I were both racing at Texas Motor Speedway in June so we had an ESPN appearance together there, but Melanie was racing somewhere else so this is the first time since we launched the campaign that all three of us were together. After the autograph session Danica had to fly home to Phoenix but Melanie and I went out with some of the folks at Hostess and rode the Big Shot at the top of the Stratosphere. It's a ride that catapults you to 1,081 feet at a force of 4G's and then you freefall back down to the top of the building. It was a thrill, but I think it might have taken a few years off the end of my life. Later we went and played some craps and lucky me I walked away with some of the Bellagio's money. The night before I did the same to the Hard Rock, so overall Vegas was good to me.
After Vegas I headed to Los Angeles for some business meetings. I attended my first fashion show-- Gen Art's Fresh Faces of Fashion-- and did my first red carpet walk. It really cracked me up because of course I did not expect any of the media to know who I was and this one photographer was trying to be so polite and asked, "I'm sorry, I haven't watched NASCAR in a while, can you spell your name for me?" Trust me, this guy was very LA and I think it's safe to say he has NEVER watched a stock car race in his entire life, but I thought it was really sweet how he was trying not to hurt my feelings. I went to some of the Hollywood hotspots-- Koi (THE place to have sushi in LA), Skybar at the Mondrian Hotel, Chateau Marmont (where John Belushi had his last party and Jim Morrison lived in the late 60s), and the very exclusive Hyde Lounge , the place where the Hollywood celebrities go to see and be seen. I was surprised at how small Hyde was, it only accomadates 100 patrons. It was entertaining to see all the paparazzi waiting anxiously outside to get their shots for the tabloids, what a weird job. Singer and poet Henry Rollins once wrote of the strange existence that is the Hollywood scene:
This is the remarkable story about a father and son. Watch this beautiful video about Team Hoyt Racing. A glimpse of the remarkable father-son bond of Dick and Rick Hoyt, and their inspirational journey together in a triathlon and life itself. The goal of Team Hoyt is to integrate the physically challenged into everyday life. One way to accomplish this is to educate the able-bodied, making them more aware of the issues that the disabled face every day. Another is by actively helping the disabled to participate in activities that would otherwise be inaccessible to them. Team Hoyt targets both of these areas.A great story that needed to be shared, enjoy.
Ladies, we all know we have a long way to go, but this really makes me angry. I just got off the phone with Mary Corriveau, City Manager of Watertown, New York. She was an incredibly nice lady and must be extremely patient to be working with men like Timothy LaBouf. In the letter he sent to Mary Lambert, firing her after 54 years of teaching Sunday school at the First Baptist Church, he quoted the first epistle to Timothy:
Sorry I haven't checked in for a while, things have been... hectic. I have been to San Francisco, Seattle, Tampa, Atlanta, Charlotte, and Indianapolis in the past couple weeks and things are not slowing down. I have been doing sponsor appearances, testing, racing-- leaving me with five days in the entire month of July where I will sleep in my home in Charlotte, North Carolina. I am enjoying every minute, I have a great team and a great sponsor and a great race car and I don't have a single complaint. I am so thankful for all the wonderful people I have met, and all the beautiful new places I have visited. Life is being good to me... but I am a bit worried about the situation for the rest of the world...
The war, a conflict that no doubt has been going on for hundreds of years, has escalated in the past week and the latest headline I read had 500,000 people displaced in Lebanon. There are 25,000 Americans there and only 450 have been shipped home so far. Besides the situation between Israel and Lebanon, we've got thousands of troops over in Iraq and I hope that each and every one of those soldiers make it home to their families, but I know that some of them will not. Sometimes the world can be so daunting, the news so horrific, the scenes so devastating that sometimes you would rather not look at it. You would rather turn a cold shoulder to the headlines and look the other way. But due to our advances in communication and travel, the world feels smaller every day, and what now seems a war so very far away, could some time very soon end up in our backyard. I do not have to remind you about the last time the war ended up being fought on our soil, the day that changed the world forever. I hope that never happens again, but I worry that it could.
While the masses in America distract themselves with news about which celebrities are too skinny and where Brad and Angelina are... the world in other places is filled with chaos, poverty, and deep rooted anger. We need to find a way to deal with our differences. We need to accept that different people believe in different gods, or no god at all. That's okay. We don't have to agree, we just have to learn to live with each other. We need to stop spending all our energy on fighting. As Will Ferrell said in Anchorman, agree to disagree. Unfortunately, some of the people on the planet are not so willing to overlook our differences. They don't seem to be the kind of people that you can reason with, so what do we do? Is there no solution to the conflict? Is violence the only answer, do we play for keeps?
In his review of Gore's film, renowned movie critic Roger Ebert said in his review:
