March Sadness

March Sadness

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This isn’t my headline. I purloined it from an article about how March Madness isn’t what it used to be, how a combination of big money, “one and done,” the glamor of television and its preference for the slam-dunk over the mid-range shot — most of all the steady encroachment of the spectacle that is football — how all of this is changing the sport.

But that’s not why it’s March Sadness for me.

It’s March Sadness for me because the University of Kentucky isn’t in the NCAA tournament.

How’s that for entitlement? But it’s worse than that. Not only do Kentucky fans expect to be in the “big dance” — they expect to be in the Final Four.

It’s good that “Selection Sunday” was also St. Patty’s Day. Thinking green helped us not to feel blue.

(A view of Lexington from the University of Kentucky Library.)

Sustenance

Sustenance

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On a walk the other day I saw a robin perfectly posed, a worm in its mouth. It was showing me its best side, with the worm in profile, and I thought about the great battle for sustenance, how it dominates.

Even in the suburbs, hawks circle their prey, crows haggle over carrion and squirrels horde their acorns.

We think we are immune, but of course we are not.

Our houses are empty from dawn to dusk, our children grow up in an instant —and all the while we are driven, too. The great battle for sustenance consumes, subsumes us all.

The Irish Season

The Irish Season

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The travel agents call it shoulder season. The New Englanders call it mud season. I call it Irish season. The time between winter and spring. A time when anything can happen. Snowfall or sunshine. Bloom or bust.

I’ve only been to Ireland once, but it feels like more often. Maybe I live vicariously through the travel of others. Or I listen to so much Irish music that I fool myself. Or I feel such an affinity for the landscape that I see it wherever I go.

Or maybe I visit there every year during the Irish season.


(County Clare channeled through the hills of West Virginia.)

Does Not Compute

Does Not Compute

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So this is the day I write about math, the day after Pi Day (Pi + 1). It’s better than writing about the Ides of March.  Maybe only slightly better, though.

“Don’t be afraid of math,” was the cheery message at the presentation on math and journalism I went to week a couple of weeks ago. Spurn math and you’ll cut yourself out of plum assignments. Spurn math and your accounts will be a mess. Spurn math and you’ll miss the story.

Our lives run on numbers, whether we like them or not. Make peace with them. But that presupposes  one has numbers to make peace with. Here is a brief tally :

Number of math classes I’ve had since high school: 1

Number of real math classes I’ve had since high school: 0

Number of business articles I’ve written: 1

Number of times I’ve written about numbers in this blog: 2 (see also Seven Times Seven)

Number of times I have not: 953

Number of times since elementary school that I helped my kids with math: 0

All of which is to say that when it comes to numbers, the only way for me to go is up.

New World

New World

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This was going to be the day I wrote about math. 3/14. Pi Day.

But then there was some news from Rome, and now it seems silly to write about math when I could be describing a small man on a high balcony asking people to pray for him. A man who didn’t take the papal motorcade back to his residence last night but hopped on the bus instead.

I looked at the crowd of faithful in St. Peter’s Square yesterday and thought about what a global phenomenon the papal selection process has become. The puffs of smoke. Habemus papam. The red shoes from Gucci. Everyone in my office crowded around a small TV.

The first pope named Francis. The first pope from the Western Hemisphere. First Jesuit, too. Conservative and progressive. New World and Old.

The looks on people’s faces as they heard the news. There was excitement, of course, and something else. I think it was hope.

Power Walk

Power Walk

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The more walks I take downtown, the more I compare them with my walks in the suburbs — the pace, the people, the places.

Yesterday’s was an outlier but also an example: A helicopter buzzed the Mall, breaking through the music in my ears, annoying me. I vaguely wondered if I should be concerned. A truck bomb? A heightened security alert? (Do we do the colors of danger anymore? I forget.)

As I made my way back to the office, I found Constitution Avenue blocked. That phalanx of bicycle police I’d seen earlier, they were just the front guard. There were uniforms everywhere. No one would be crossing the street anytime soon.

You’d think I’d be motorcade weary by now, but I’ve seen very few and none for this president. So for five minutes I was a tourist like the others standing at my corner — only without a camera or smart phone in hand. And when the black cars passed, motorcycles in the lead, ambulances bringing up the rear, sirens blaring, all the trappings and pageantry — I wasn’t listening to the music in my ears anymore. I was completely caught in the moment at hand.

I wasn’t intending to take a power walk yesterday. But that’s what I did.

Company of Writers

Company of Writers

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There were six people crammed into a booth in the darkest corner of a brightly lit pizza place off a busy street. There were two novels and an essay.

“Welcome to the writer’s group,” the waitress said. She’s served these folks for five years and has a feel for their rhythm. Maybe she has a manuscript in the basement, too.

It didn’t take long to feel at home. These are men and women who talk about transitions and character motivations and commas; who admit their dread of starting the next chapter; who spend much of their time with people who don’t exist.

Except that they do exist. They live on the page, and they lived for us last night.

It was good to be in the company of writers.

Late Light

Late Light

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There is so much we will do with it, this light. Porch sitting, weed pulling, trampoline bouncing, bike riding, hammock swinging, night walking.

There is so much we will dream in it. So many long evenings not quite in this world or the other but squarely between the two of them.

The map of our summer has not yet been drawn, or even the map of our spring.

But the late light is here. The rest can’t be far behind.

Wind, Flake, Flower

Wind, Flake, Flower

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Yesterday, the soul of March. Brisk breeze, clouds dark and low, occasional sun, and every so often a flake or two of snow in the sky. 

Cold enough for winter, bright enough for spring. The snowdrops along the path hung their heads, stayed close to the ground. It was cold even for them.

In a few weeks we’ll have cherry blossoms, daffodils, red bud trees. But not yet. There is a thinness to the light, a hesitancy in the air. The great drama is still playing out.

Will winter win, or spring?

In and Out

In and Out

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To exercise at lunchtime I don’t even have to leave my building. The health club upstairs is well stocked, well staffed and state-of-the-art. But two days out of three I put on my coat, slip in my ear buds and walk outside instead.

There are no weight machines, ellipticals or tread mills; no pool or spin class. Just pavement and people. But that’s the combination that works for me.

Turns out, it works for many. Exercising outdoors is often better than exercising indoors, studies show. It burns more calories and tweaks more muscles.

It has psychological benefits as well — and that’s what keeps me going. I come back inside after a lunchtime stroll tired and happy. The pavement is my treadmill, perspective my salvation.