I’ve spent more time in Kentucky this year than any time since I lived there decades ago. So it’s ironic that I’ve been less on top of Derby hopefuls than usual.
But maybe not. The Derby is Kentucky as metaphor. I’ve had Kentucky as anything but. The state has been so real for me that I don’t have to pine away for it.
Still, when the thoroughbreds strut in the post parade and “My Old Kentucky Home” begins to play, I’ll have white fences on my mind — and tissues at the ready.
It was the end of a long day, a long week — and it was a long walk, too. But I left the office yesterday a little before 5, cruised through Judiciary Square, the Penn Quarter and onto the Mall. By that point the mood was decidedly celebratory.
And even though I said I wouldn’t do it again, I walked all the way around the pink-petal-rimmed Tidal Basin, joining the throngs on one of the first warm days in the nation’s capital.
It’s worth noting that unless you want to rent a paddle boat, strolling is the only way to see the cherry trees in their glory.
So I did. As did everyone else. Babies in prams, bikers in spandex, bureaucrats in blazers — we were
all ambling for one purpose: to see the cherries in peak bloom and welcome the
spring.
It has been such a hard winter … but now it’s over.
Hallelujah!
This is not a sports blog, of course, but I must say a few words about the University of Kentucky men’s basketball team. They lost last night 54-60 to the University of Connecticut Huskies in the NCAA final.
The team’s energy felt different right from the opening buzzer. Key players seemed off, were in and out of the game. Free throws missed as often as they hit. The Cats had finally met a team that closed as strong as they do. Stronger, in fact.
If this was a decade ago, we’d be shaking our heads at what they could do next year, this young, freshmen team. But this group is a one-year wonder. Most of them will be gone next year, in the NBA, most probably.
It’s hard to say that “one and done” is a failure when this team made it to the finals. But it’s not the kind of basketball I grew up with.
Still, I have to say it one more time: Go, Big Blue!
(A UK dormitory building snapped from the UK Library.)
Last night I stayed up late to watch one of the craziest, most fast-paced and ultimately satisfying basketball games I’ve seen in years. (Of course, I seldom watch more than half a dozen games a season!)
It was the University of Kentucky Wildcats (Go, Big Blue!) versus the University of Louisville Cardinals in the “Sweet Sixteen” round of the NCAA basketball tourney.
As you might expect with teams that are 80 miles apart and a coach who left one team and ended up at the other, the rivalry is intense.
At first, the UK starters, all freshman (Kentucky Coach Calipari having no problem with “one and done”), seemed nervous, out-of-sync. But by halftime the Cats had closed to within a few points of the Cards. From then on, they were on Louisville’s tail, trailing by a point or three but seeming like thoroughbreds patiently biding their time on the rail so they can let it all out in the home stretch.
Kentucky led for less than two minutes, but they were the right two minutes. When the buzzer sounded it was 74-69, UK.
The last time I watched the Wildcats beat U of L was December 28. That night I watched with Dad. Last night I watched for him.
(No basketball photos but here’s a street scene from downtown Lexington, where there is much jubilation today.)
On Saturday I spotted signs of spring, snowdrops and green shoots, that pinkish haze that appears in the tree tops, proof the old oaks are coming to life.
It struck me as I strolled that I might be imagining the greening branches, the swollen buds, that maybe they were like the puddles of water that appear on a hot summer tarmac.
Because today, St. Patty’s Day, I’m not so sure. It looks like a foot of snow outside. It’s the whiting of the green. And for some reason, I welcome it.
It’s such a quiet, dutiful dousing, wet and heavy, clinging to each twig and bough. It stills me — and fills me with wonder, that such meteorlogical marvels can exist this far into the greening season.
Spring will come soon, no way it cannot. The shoots and buds are biding their time. But for now, on this day devoted to green, we have a different kind of beauty. It’s white.
Has there ever been such an aeronautical mystery? Of course there has, I tell myself. There was Amelia Earhart. But she had no transponders, no black box. When I mention Amelia Earhart to my kids, they draw a blank. That mystery is forgotten.
But the mystery of Malaysian Airlines Flight 370 is not. How could it be? Cable news blares it almost nonstop, and there are newspaper articles on the quality of the coverage and the amount of speculation the story forces on reporters.
Today’s leads are some of the most dramatic. The plane flew for hours after the transponder was turned off. It appears that the aircraft was deliberately diverted, says the Malaysian prime minister. I drag out an old atlas, refresh my geography of the Malay peninsula and Indian Ocean. I catch up on a week’s worth of facts and rumors. I consider how much this seems like a made-for-TV movie.
And then, like most people in the plugged-in, news-aware world, I wonder: How does a huge jetliner disappear? Could it possibly have landed? Where did it go? Where is it now? And will we ever, ever find it?
It has been noted elsewhere that throughout most of these Winter Games, the temperature in Sochi, Russia, has been higher than in many parts of the United States. And the major weather delay there so far has been due not to blizzard but to fog.
Still, to the viewer back home, the snow-peaked Causcasus, the high-tech ski suits and the sound of cowbells can only mean one thing: It’s cold!
So, I pretend.
Olympic viewing has also skewed my sense of place. When I look at the lumpy snow in my backyard I don’t see wind-blown drifts. Instead I see moguls.
This is a temporary phenomenon. I don’t expect it to last.
Today is the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but for people much younger than I am, it’s simply December 7. September 11, 2001, pretty much took care of what time and attrition hadn’t already.
This is not altogether a bad thing. How many days of infamy should one year hold?
But because my father is a World War II veteran, and because I shared his pain recently when a nurse at the VA Hospital had no idea what “D Day” meant, I feel some sadness as Pearl Harbor Day vanishes from the collective memory.
At least this shouldn’t happen until everyone directly affected by it is gone. That’s not the way it is, I know, especially as our national attention span grows shorter by the day. But that’s the way it ought to be.
And through the woods … traveling to the Thanksgiving feast has never been easy. But here in the megalopolis it’s taken on a new degree of craziness.
A nor’easter is expected to dump anywhere from two to four inches of rain in the next 24 hours. Snow and ice have not been ruled out. Flooding is a possibility. Traffic jams are guaranteed.
To gather at grandma’s all you needed was a sleigh and a team of willing horses. To reach family and friends at the modern table requires strategic thinking (should I leave at 2 or 1:30?), nerves of steel (which route through the mountains promises the least chance of snow accumulation?) and a go-for-it attitude.
But go-for-it we will. People are important. Whether they’re over the river and through the woods — or up I-95.
It’s hard to say anything about President John F. Kennedy that hasn’t already been said. There was even a newspaper article about the pink suit and pill box hat Jacqueline Kennedy wore in Dallas that day. (They have been preserved, complete with blood stains, not to be displayed for another 50 years.)
What struck me last week, when I watched the two-part PBS special about JFK, is how young he was, how young we were.
Young and innocent.
This was before Watergate, Columbine, 9/11, Newtown. This is before we lost face, lost hope.
It’s as if he embodied all the promise of a younger nation — and all that died with him on November 22, 1963.
(Tourists visit Kennedy’s grave in Arlington Cemetery.)