American football has ended its seeming stranglehold on the domestic sports scene. A surprisingly close game last night between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs kept me up to the end. That’s pretty unusual. I quit watching football decades ago. My interest diminished with the demise of an old version of the Seattle Seahawks, the one with Jim Zorn and Steve Largent. Or perhaps it diminished with my renewed interest in baseball. Whatever.

For a baseball fan, football feels about as welcome as your ex showing up at your next wedding. Baseball has just introduced itself at the beginning of April when the National Football League holds it’s draft. When the season gets going and the annual draft of new baseball talent occurs in early June, the NFL starts rattling its sabers about pre-camp workouts. Baseball gets some clarity as good teams rise to the top, bad teams falter, and the 2024 trade deadline approaches–and the NFL opens its training camps! All of these boorish events pale to this: baseball heads into its final month to determine the postseason, a five-week celebration of near-daily baseball games ending in the World Championship, and the NFL opens its season. In a pragmatic but depressing capitulation to reality, MLB mostly avoids holding postseason games on Sundays when most NFL games occur.

(And why do we call it football? Players’ feet only intentionally touch the ball to punt the ball away or kick the ball through the goalposts. This likely reflects my ignorance, but go with me here: players hand off, run, pass, and catch the ball. Now that European née global sport has appropriately called itself football!)

Ah, but for a few glorious weeks baseball reigns supreme. Football retires from the stage and lets the sport-formerly-known-as-America’s-sport, baseball, back into into the leading role it once occupied. Collegiate basketball intrudes, true, during March Madness, but it displays the genteel manners one would expect from amateur athletics. Baseball spring training games occur in the afternoon; NCAA games occur primarily in the evening. It crowns a champion during the first week of the baseball season, turning in that assignment a week late just as college students will, and bows itself from the stage. And the professionals in the NBA? Who cares? Their interminable playoff schedule will just be starting in mid-April, a two-month slog that ends in the middle of June.

Baseball and football play nice once each year. Football crowns a champ just prior to the start of baseball’s spring training. For six weeks all baseball fans think one of two things:

• My team could win the World Series this year!
• My team might not be as bad as it looks!

Hope springs, regardless. Thank you, Super Bowl; thank you, Spring.

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I know more cold weather remains a very real possibility. By the weekend we will see temperatures at or below freezing. Yet the ephemeral forecasts from various sources promise me I’ll see more early spring temps than I will not, and that’s something. Very soon the star magnolia will bloom, daring the other trees to follow suit. Judging by last year, we’re running a bit late. Here’s a photo from February 10th last year:

Perhaps you can tell from the photo that the star magnolia (all magnolias?) blossoms prior to putting out leaves. Our purple magnolia does this too. Those little buds appear in the fall, winter like a butterfly’s chrysalis, and then get a bit fuzzier and bigger as their imminent bursting approaches. Most pop out together, but some appear late. March sees only a few:

Like the Star of Bethlehem in Christian scripture, the star magnolia signals the rebirth of our plant world around the small plot of land we manage.

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Tomorrow goes by Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday and some German name which I can’t pronounce or spell and which means Doughnut Day. All of them imply, “hey, we need to party and indulge, because tomorrow begins Lent.” Unfortunately (kind of) Ash Wednesday coincides with Valentine’s Day. We’ve decided our party tomorrow will stand in for Valentine’s Day. While we nibble on a few berries, nuts, maybe a piece or two of cheese, I will prepare calas or rice beignets using this recipe. I’m looking forward to it. I love involved, authentic-in-spirit recipes, and this Anson Mills recipe promises all of that. I’ve not purchased their rice or pastry flour; we’ll hope the expensive Carolina rice I did purchase will suffice. Dinner, which we’ll start working on after our late morning calas in at least a desultory way, will be Anson Mills’ Roasted Stuffed Quail for Two with Madeira Sauce. We did not spring for the mail-order quail when we first planned this as a New Year’s Eve meal. Our local grocer carried them. Nor do we have madeira, let alone a 5-year one, and I’m not buying one for 3 tablespoons of recipe use! Some marsala and sherry will suffice. We’ll set some simply prepared asparagus next to the quail and toast our near-30-year relationship.

As lovely as that may (or may not) sound, it’s Lent which occupies my mind today and for the past few. One needs to prepare for Lent. Arriving to Ash Wednesday, opening one’s bleary, I-partied-too-much eyes, and arbitrarily picking something to give up for Lent represents a knee-jerk response to the liturgical meaning of Lent which undercuts it. Sure, you can give up caffeine or alcohol or that favorite candy or whatever because, “that’s what I always do”–and Lent will mean about as much as the thought you put into it. One’s spiritual life basically runs on cruise control (at whatever speed you’ve set) if this represents your approach.

Alternatively, a person in touch with one’s relationship to the Presence which animated this Universe–which created life (a scientifically provable proposition which I will address in a future post), which appears to have imbued all of us with a portion of Its spirit, and which in a way not describable to me, appears to care about us–seeks with initiative and purpose to pledge oneself to one or more practices during Lent, then that person approaches the mystery of Easter with (hopefully) a clearer insight to understanding that mystery. If nothing else, they approach in a better ‘spiritual plane’ which even the non-religious believe to be a good thing.

I have for more than a decade attempted to set one practice each for the physical, the mental, and the spiritual/emotional. (I know, I know. Let’s debate the conflation of “spiritual/emotional” some other time.) This year my practices do not need to be hidden, as they sometimes do to be authentic. I plan to…

• Go to the gym thrice weekly as we originally intentioned a year ago. We’ve attempted to restart the gym practice since a falling off in the holidays to limited success. I also have a more private concern here which isn’t so much a practice as a focus on what I’m already doing.
• I’m going to begin reading the Bible with an emphasis on two things: the Pentateuch (the first five books) and the four gospels. I’m not sure of the juxtaposition. About seven to ten years ago I used a guide to a first-time reading of the Bible in which one read Genesis, Mark, a few other books–it gave a representation of the Bible overall, including a book from the prophets, a couple apostolic books, etc. I liked it, but I’m ready for a bit more.
• Emotionally/spiritually? I’m still not sure on this one. I think my fledging effort to be more social will come into play. Of the varieties of introversion, I’m the one who avoids social gatherings among other things. This will be ….interesting.

Lent means more than Advent to me. Perhaps the focus on penance/introspection? I can definitively say there are days which anchor me to my spiritual pursuits. Ash Wednesday and its implication of Lent is one.