This hatred has nothing to do with me being a Russian-Hungarian Jew, or having
an aversion to large family gatherings, or my feelings about religion in
general.

I always hated Christmas Day because of the fact that almost everything was
closed..from the largest businesses to the neighborhood taverns to the local
bagel shop. These closures, to me, were a nagging inconvenience and forced a
departure from my daily routine.

As recently as maybe five years ago, I especially regretted the fact that I was
given a day off from work and the racetracks were closed, although I seem to
recall that one or two tracks (for some reason I am thinking Calder) used to
put on a Christmas Day card 15 or 20 years ago, though I might be wrong about
this.

In the past couple of years, I have stepped back from the racing game, which
totally consumed me from the early 1980s, when I dropped out of law school to
take a job as a $90 per week hot walker at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans,
until about three years ago, when, although working, as I am now, on more
conventional jobs I was preoccupied with racing, reading as much as I could,
posting here, waiting eagerly for the Saturday entries to be posted on
Wednesday afternoon.

No matter what was going on in my life or in the world at large, no one was
happier than me as long as I had my advance DRF PPs, maybe a meat loaf hero
from Majestic Deli or some street food from one of the many food carts near my
office, and was able to commandeer an empty conference room and do some serious
studying. I would attend the races live on Saturdays, schedule annual Saratoga
trips, etc.

A couple of years ago I began pulling back from Racing. I tend to become tired
of things quickly, so maybe after nearly 40 years in the game I was becoming
bored. The problems in Racing, and the constant discussions and reminders of
those problems...most importantly the knowledge that many (not most)
thoroughbreds are to some extent abused and/or neglected, that thoroughbreds
are still being sent to the slaughterhouses, the conveniently mostly ignored
poverty that many backstretch workers endure, the drugs, the supertrainers, the
last second tote changes, knowing most of us are playing against syndicates
armed with much more information than we have, the lack of central
leadership...most of these have been well documented.

In a moment of clarity last week, speaking with Frank D, I told him that Racing
was my favorite restaurant for many years, but recently the food (the day to
day Racing product) and the service (the way horseplayers are treated) has
really taken a turn for the worst. Under those circumstances, to continue going
to said "restaurant" does not make sense.

Is anyone still reading? My point is that we in New York State and in New
Jersey, and soon probably many other states, will be looking at weeks and weeks
which will turn into (my opinion, hope I am wrong) months and months of
Christmas Days. I will continue to work remotely on my full time job and my
part time hustle, although we all agreed to take a 20% salary haircut on the
hustle job so that no one would be laid off, at least for now.

Back to Racing: As far as I know, and I think an announcement is pending, the
Santa Anita Derby and eventually the Florida Derby, are still scheduled to be
run (I am very skeptical about this). If indeed these races are run, we can
take the Derby points standings after those races and construct a hypothetical
Kentucky Derby field for a race to be run in May, as originally scheduled.
Maybe TG will post an advance set of KY Derby sheets for the "Mythical May" 2020 Derby.

Once the top 20 or so are identified, we can all have some fun posting some
(mythical) articles about the Derby runners and personalities, i.e. "Nadal
works 5/8ths in 55.2; Baffert Concedes 'A bit faster than we were looking
for'", or the trainer of a woefully slow outlier in the field saying "The horse
is doing really well right now, and besides, the owner always wanted to have a
horse in the Derby". Or maybe even "Maximum Security and Country House to lead
(Mythical) Derby Post Parade; Gary West Says He will only Participate if
'Maximum' is in front of 'Country'."

As to how to actually run a mythical race which will exist only on the TG
message board, and can only be watched from Living Room Downs, this I do not
know...

MOST IMPORTANTLY... I hope all T-Generates, those I have had the pleasure of
meeting, and the larger number of you who I only know through the message
board, come through this crisis healthy. As to some of the more optimistic
posters on this board who I have been a bit testy with recently, my sincere
apologies, but my belief is that until we learn more about what we are up
against, I consider optimism a form of misinformation.