Full Weekend of Sportsball-- Organizing 50 Teenage Boys and Other Impressive Things

We attended almost a half of a high school football playoff game Friday night and a college soccer conference championship on Saturday.  We also watched a KU basketball game, a KU soccer tournament game and the end of Monday night NFL game is happening right now.

Most of my Friday night observations were comparing football games here, now, to football games in suburban Denver in 1987 (shockingly, it was more fun then) but I did have a few actual ball sports thoughts.  Coaching, for instance, is entirely different in soccer, basketball and volleyball than it is in football.  Football is a game of strange logistics, and at high school that is really remarkable.  Getting fifty teenagers to pay attention to anything is really impressive.  Getting fifty people to go where you want them to go is tough.  Getting fifty guys to get on and off a field and lined in particular places is really quite something. 

It's also a good reminder that they could probably follow the instructions on their lab reports.

(And, for the record, the local high school football team won, so will continue with the play-offs. The KU basketball team won. The local university won the soccer conference tournament and will start NCAA Division II tournament next weekend.  KU soccer won and advances in the NCAA Division I Tournament.  The Broncos did not win, but I did not watch that collapse, and the Chiefs just did win.)

Looking for a ball (at which I won't lose my slipper)

I have not yet gone ballroom dancing or attended a ball as part of ball year.

I'm looking for suggestions as to where I could do either.

I anticipate The Mister joining me, so presence or absence of Prince Charming is irrelevant.

The best ball I can envision will 1) include actual dancing in ball gowns  2) not take itself too seriously (sneakers balls or adult proms welcome) 3) be affordable enough that my friends and I could go and 4) in support of a cause that I personally support.

Dropping the Ball but then Getting On the Ball for Ball Games

As part of ball year I planned to attend all sorts of ball games at all sorts of levels.

In the spring I attended minor league baseball, youth soccer, and college basketball.  Over the summer I attended 9 international soccer matches.

This fall.  Well, this fall I attended eight youth soccer games (missing four for BioBlitz Oklahoma and three for the Lego League competition).  I intended to go to semi-pro soccer, and high school sports, and lacrosse and field hockey and maybe even some rugby, and then it was crazy season with the 3,000 plants, so I dropped that ball.

BUT it turns out that the college at which I teach has a conference winning soccer team, so they are hosting the conference tournament on campus, starting tomorrow.  We'll attend if they make it to the finals on Saturday.  AND the local high school football team's regular season is over, but they have their first play-off game at home on Friday.  I suddenly feel so on the ball.

Ball Book-- The Crossover

Kwame Alexander's The Crossover is amazing.  A librarian friend suggested it for ball year and, despite her suggestion and it being a Newberry winner, I balked when I opened it and realized that it was written not only in verse, but 13-year-old basketball player first person narrator verse.
But it works.  I read it in a sitting or two and I cried lots.
Months later I started reading it with Dianthus one evening and while he was intimidated by the form, he went to bed and had finished it by the time we walked to school the next morning. He claims he didn't cry. Highly recommended for many of my readers, including my mother and mother-in-law, whether or not you are interested in junior high basketball.

I want to read more Kwame Alexander, but I think at this very moment I am going to go read Pride and Prejudice again as my favorite ball book for Mo'BallMoNo.

Mo'BallMoNo Begins

Recently I was telling someone about the seasons in my life ("spring semester" but it really is winter, groundhog day, spring semester and spring soccer, finals, field season, summer, back to school, crazy season, I survived crazy season, "Thanskgiving, finals and Advent", actual "holidays").

"Crazy season" lasts Labor Day to Fall Break and includes the time in which I teach double lectures, Aster and Dianthus's soccer seasons, and my field season.  This year I was also writing a promotion document and Dianthus was doing before-school Lego League during the same time.  While most of that is done, we haven't fully entered "I survived crazy season" because my students and I have only documented 1,917 of the the nearly 3,000 plants in a place where there were 44 last year.

BUT, I am back on the ball and thinking about ball things and things other than teaching and will blog again. 
In fact, I am so excited to blog again that I am calling it More Ball Month November (Mo'BallMoNo) and I have a lot to say.  That's right, I am so caught up that I am starting a month-long November project on the 11th, and then not really starting it now.

Balls soon.  In the meantime.  Cyclanthera dissecta (now C. naudiniana) after an early (Oct. 12) freeze and think about waging piece to remember the Armistice.

"The Ball is Round"

We've attended eight World Cup matches so far (9th today) and I feel I should have more to say about them.  Yet I don't want to jinx anything, nor am I ready to type about the details.
It has been a great trip.  The ball keeps rolling.

Halftime at USA vs England semi-final

Is it American to score big? Is it sexist to care?

I fell asleep when the US was only up 7-0 in the match against Thailand last night.  I'll admit I was a bit disappointed by the final score; 13-0 is just so unseemly.  I don't like gloating; I'm embarrassed by hugely obnoxious gestures of my country-mates; and big wins feel loud, a trait I am endeavoring to teach my family not to be.
But then I awoke to lots of criticism of the US women, as if they had done something wrong by playing really well and being proud of it.
Someone asked if the same criticism would have been leveled at the US Men's National Team, which I found laughable, because the US men just aren't that good. But it did make me wonder how much of this does have to do with sexist perceptions.  So I'm comparing this to the Dream Team at the Olympics.
I'll point out a few things here:
There are only 3 subs in an international soccer match.  There is no putting in a second team or resting the starters.
The first US Dream Team in 1992 had a 350 point differential over 8 games.  That means they were averaging more than 40 points more than their opponents per game.  I seem to recall comments about how lucky their opponents were to play with the best, and how insulting it would have been for the Dream Team to quit shooting at an international competition.
Thailand may have been out of their league last night, but they are a team who had to win a spot to be here at the World Cup.  In the Asian qualifying tournament, they won a match 6-1 and beat out teams who defeated other teams 10-1.  It is too bad that women's soccer is so poorly supported elsewhere, but winning big is not a US thing, or something to be ashamed of.

Boats Before Balls

Perhaps because we live on the edge of the high plains, boats fascinate us.  So far on this adventure we have ridden a small tour boat on the Firth of Forth (under the bridges and to Inchholm), a little passenger ferry from Britain to Lismore and back, a motor boat to Threave Castle on an island in the River Dee, a car ferry across the Rhine in Germany and a wonderful current-powered passenger ferry across the Rhine in Switzerland*.

Today the "ball" part of our adventure begins (Go Jamaica!), but the boats have sure been fun.

*Two boat rides included strangers from the internet and we all survived; in fact meeting them was delightful.

Car ferry in Germany

Oh, we also rode a boat through the
world's first water balanced
 circular boat lift.

 

Threave Castle

Isle of Lismore

Testing Travel

Tornadoes, floods, and life stressors are all around, but two good friends and I managed to have a ball and count some plants in the last two days. (Okay, I had an image to accompany that thought, but since this is mostly a test, I'll leave these two.)

It's all fun and games until the Under10 tournament

Aster and Dianthus ended their rec league soccer seasons with a big tournament a few weeks ago.

Two otherwise really fun soccer seasons ended with parents loudly questioning Aster's volunteer coach's* decision to focus on letting kids score goals rather than defend, accusations of cheating by different coaches in group texts, and players supposedly trash talking another coach because she's female.  After a 5-1 loss in a gritty wind in the finals, Dianthus 's last act was hearing his coach complaining about an unfair call.

Ugh. 

Fun games are no longer fun and games when it gets like that.

*That would be the Mister.

The Kites are Coming!

Actually, as I write (May 7, 2019 10:15 a.m.) , the Mississippi Kites are returning to Weatherford, Oklahoma.  There were 8 circling high as I was walking home from the dentist-- not sure if they are staying or traveling on north.

This is the latest they have arrived in the 9 years I have been watching.  I saw one while hiking in the Wichita Mountains (south of here) on Saturday, and may have seen one, alone, yesterday morning, but the flock is soaring in now.

May One

The first of May is somewhat of a big deal to me.

Growing up, on the first of May I dropped paper baskets full of dandelions on our doorstep, and every so often as an adult send May baskets to friends. One year I made a May pole in my basement.  I consider it the start of my favorite month of flowers and celebrations. 

The first of May marks the beginning of Pediatric Stroke Awareness Month and I often alert folks to the Childrens' Hemiplegia and Stroke Association (chasa.org) and the fact that kids have strokes, too.

The first of May often coincides with the beginning of the end of the college school year (I'm giving a final tomorrow and one Friday, and graduation is Saturday!) and has become the time I catch up on phenology: I can usually report when the Mississippi Kites arrived (not yet!) and can compare flower seasonality because I post an image of big bouquet each year.

Things have felt odd this week.  It has been a gray and drizzly-- exceptionally spring-like and completely out of place for Western Oklahoma.  Monday I gave a final to one of the best group of students I have every had, with tears and thank-yous and graduation announcements exchanged at the end.  Meanwhile I'll be pleasantly surprised if all of the students make it to Friday's final in a similar-sized class.  My institution's fabulous Dean of Students, the woman who assured every student, parent of student, and faculty member, that she would help with their problems, and that she had chocolate in her office if she couldn't herself be of help, died.  I learned of her death yesterday through an awkward e-mail.  Later in the day I learned that the provost's father and Dianthus's PE teacher's husband died and that there are lots of roles needing filled during end-of-year stuff at our schools.

Given my renewed proclamation of my witchy nature and pagan tendencies (a quick "May Day" search of this blog will demonstrate that my love of May Day long precedes witch year), today I felt I needed a May basket, but I was thinking of death as I glumly walked through the wet grass looking for flowers. I picked the iris and bachelor buttons along the alley and peaking out of a kids' digging area overgrown with honeysuckle and vinca were giant fluffy peonies.  They are along a warm south facing wall in an area that isn't seen, so I didn't feel at all bad about picking them.

I found a real basket from a dear friend.  I gave myself a self-inflicted challenge of arranging them in the basket rather than in a vase. I lit the sun and moon candle from Carrie-Ann, my moonbeam (I was her sunshine) who died in September and suddenly we were all there: friends near and far, mother and grandmothers, witches, flowers; light, gray, dark, life, and death, sun and moon.  Spring Re-birth.
And because I'm a product of my time, I snapped a photo, blew out the candle, posted the picture on social media and rushed my sons to their evening activity. 

So May One feels a little more this year.  It reads like the start of some blessing for which I haven't had time to prepare an end:
May one look out for the birds that are bound to come through.
May one recognize that pink fluffiness is transient, but that doesn't make it any less real.
May one light the candles of friendship.
May one remember that death calls us all.
May one recall that just as winter comes, so does spring.
May one always have a colleague with chocolate in her office and may one be the bearer of chocolate when needed.

May one have a great May.

Leeks, Leks, and the First of April

If you arrived here because of a letter sent on, or about, the first of April, you should not feel foolish because:

• Ball Year is a real thing and I want your ideas for the timing of the dancing ball (it doesn't work unless friends are involved) and what else I should do during ball year (see many of the posts below).
• My school's women's basketball team did play for the NCAA Div. II National Championship Friday night, forcing the game to a second over-time and eventually losing.
• Marmot's Paradise exists with marmots from all over the world and we are going 
• There is great documentary footage of prairie chickens lekking (filmed near where my in-laws live for Discovery Channel's North America)
• The BBC did produce a great segment on flying penguins.
• I still find leeks in the toilet funny, 24 years (24 years? impossible!) after a friend and I first put one there.
• June 31 less than 90 days away!

If you didn't get a letter this year, and want to be on the distribution list, send me your e-mail and I will make it happen.

Happy April!

Big Balls in the Sky

Moonrise yesterday was stunning.  Just after sunset, in the purple glowing twilight, a giant ball appeared caught in my neighbor's tree.  The Mister, not normally as excited by the moon as I am, returned from choir practice to tell me to go outside and look at it.

It felt distinctly springy standing there watching the colors of the sky change.  Our yard is riddled with croci and little iris reticulata, the daffodils on the north and east sides are blooming (those against the south wall bloomed and faded long ago), the buds on the peach and lilacs are swelling, and the air smelled faintly sweet as the golden currant started to open.  Another neighbor's Bradford pear is mostly open and an apricot and a cherry (I think) a block away are blooming in a backyard.

Watching the moon, which felt obviously full, rise, I wondered how it could actually be waning.  For I knew that yesterday was the spring equinox (at 4:58 p.m. local time) and I knew that Easter comes the first Sunday after the first full moon after the equinox (a piece of information I have always enjoyed because it combines solar time [the equinox], lunar time [a full moon], and human calendars [day of the week] in what I now recognize as a pleasant combination of my scientific, pagan, and Christian sensibilities).  So if yesterday was the equinox and Easter is not for another full month, then the moon must have been past full (otherwise Easter would be this Sunday).

This morning I looked this up to confirm, and the full moon was at 8:42 p.m. local time just after I was admiring it, almost four hours after the astronomical equinox. I wondered if the disparity was something to do with the full moon being visible in Jerusalem or Rome or somewhere, or the day of the equinox rather than the moment of it.  It turns out that by the Georgian calendar, Easter is set as the first Sunday after the full moon after March 21 (representing the equinox) rather than the actual equinox.  Fascinating. (To me, anyway, literally).

Big balls in the sky keep surprising me.

Seasonal Madness

As we were driving north to Kansas yesterday, only an hour or two after we completely changed our weekend plans and decided to drive north, the Mister and I were a bit giddy.  It felt like spring break! march madness! youthful frivolity! having a ball in ball year! to be driving almost 300 miles each way for a basketball game.
In truth, we had practical reasons to drive to central Kansas, and wonderful parents/in-laws happy to put us up for the night, but it was still quite a lark to watch the second round of the NCAA Division 2 tournament.  The games was a nail biter, with the students from my institution down most of the game, and was tied with 14.9 seconds left.  A last second 3 pointer put my students ahead and they move on to the regional finals tomorrow night.

I rather hate tournaments because they make it such that almost all players end their season (and their sporting careers) with a loss, but they are also very exciting.

The Mister and I had actually already seen the regionals (first three rounds) of NCAA Division 2 Basketball (when our West Virginia institution hosted in 2007) but driving to another state with the kids to watch a college basketball game was a new ball year experience.

Take your boys to women's balls

College Basketball: Ball Year Ball Game 1

One of the first events of ball year was taking the family to watch a college basketball game last week.  Amidst all of the costumes and pageantry--many types of "balls" have that in common-- we saw students from the college at which I teach play a great game of basketball and end their undefeated conference season with a 101 point home win. 

When Dianthus called my parents to excitedly tell them about watching the game, he never mentioned that the students we were watching were female.  I don't think it occurred to him that that's an important detail.  And that makes me happy.

When the movie Hidden Figures about Katherine Johnson and the black female "calculators" at NASA came out two years ago, something about all of the "take your daughters to see Hidden Figures" publicity made me bristle.  While I am always for the making (and viewing of) good movies featuring mathematicians, intelligent women, and the space program, much less the combination of all three, it is not just young girls who need to be able to envision black women successfully navigating STEM careers. Many sons, including mine, need the message as well.

International Women's Soccer: Impetus for Ball Year 2019
(Here in Frisco, Texas in October)

"Ball Year" came about this year because we have tickets to see women from Korea, New Zealand, Nigeria, Brazil, and Jamaica play soccer against each other in France (and I want to throw another gala dance party).  In fewer than 100 days (the US Team started advertising mid-week) we'll be part of a foolish mania celebrating the athletic teamwork of women. Fanaticism over women playing sportsball is no less foolish than fanaticism over men playing sportsball, I grant you, but I'm pretty excited that my sons will get caught up in it, just like they get caught up in other foolish things (mens sportsball, computer games, re-tellings of Greek mythology, baking, what have you).

Mardi Gras- Prepared for Another Ball

In other ball news, thinking it was going to involve dancing, The Mister and I attended a Mardi Gras Party at the American Banjo Museum last night.  Hall of Famer Debbie Schreyer played a mean four-string with the Dixieland Pickup Band.  I like watching women lead and I like watching talent worth following getting followed.

Debbie Schreyer at the American Banjo Museum Krewe de Mardi Gras

Cranes?

A flock heading north flew over at 12:45 p.m. today (February 25).  They sounded like cranes; close and loud and yet nearly invisible in the bright midday sky.

Croci!

While we have had some crocus up for at least a week and a half, between 10:15 a.m. this morning (Sunday, February 24) and 4 p.m. this afternoon, dozens of yellow crocus, several clumps of white and several purple reticulated iris opened. 
We admired the several clumps of yellow crocus and single purple iris open at 10:15 so we know the dozens more were really new. 
Spring for a while! 

Burning off the winter

The Groundhog Party 2019: A Summoning of Spring, was a huge success.  We had a new winner of pin the shadow on the groundhog, the groundhog apple pie in cheddar crust was as delicious as ever* (and there was enough food that I we had leftovers for breakfast), clouds wafted from the punch, and we twirled fire.

For the 26th year of groundhog parties (the first was in Boulder in 1994), a dear friend drove down from Kansas, we baked gorgeous pies, and we added witchiness to the celebration.  At first the witchiness felt a bit forced-- what can we do to end witch year with a party?  And then I started reading about pagan sabbats and investigating Imbolc and suddenly it all made so much sense because the Groundhog Party has always been a pagan celebration of the coming of spring.  This year we added extra flowers, made the pies extra sunny (traditional Imbolc foods are wheat and round and golden), lit candles throughout the house, and burned away the greens of winter (in this case adding some kerosene to a giant sedge I had brought home from work).  

It was a great party.  I don't think anyone resented that I made them make name tags and did formal introductions because it led to guests meeting other guests and actually talking.  People asked for pie recipes.  We started making plans for practice sessions with the fire torches so that more people will want to pull them out next year.  At church this morning, three weeks after the party, a man went out of his way to thank me for inviting him. 

I'm writing this to remind you (and myself of the future) that people are longing to celebrate.  It doesn't take a witch to bring people together for frivolity and good food, but the synergy can make magic. 

JMM with Shaker Blood Orange Pie

Welcome of witches, hedgehogs, and seasonal
guessing game

Shaker Lemon: J.M. Moody Photo

Flowers!

 *The Sausage Apple Pie and the Shaker Lemon and Shaker Blood Orange are all from Kate McDermott's The Art of the Pie.

(Not So) On The Ball

While I still have much to write about witches, I am pleased to announce that Ball Year has begun.

What will Ball Year bring?

-Gala dance parties?
-A renewed interest in juggling?
-International Sporting Events?
-Testicles (or at least testicle puns)?
-Flowers in spherical inflorescences?

Perhaps all of that, and more. 
Ideas, as always, accepted.

Daffodils!

There are daffodils open on the south side of my garage right now, Feb. 4.

Thanks to The Mister for alerting me.

That Kind of Witch, Too

"I am not THAT kind of witch," was to be today's proclamation, after I declared yesterday that I am a witch.  And certainly there are lots of kinds of witches I am not.  I am not a magical being (at least, not beyond being a living loving human, which is, in itself, pretty spectacular magic).  I do not cast spells.  I do not wish ill on others.  I'm not a midwife.  I'm not Wiccan.  I'm not an herbalist.  Much as I'd like to, I can't fly, and I have no particular affinity for broomsticks.

But beyond a lifetime of interest in celebrating the seasons and the moon (and Glow Year and Star Year), often right on the pagan holidays, I'm now 33 years into the same Halloween costume, "a witch with a day job". I've always taken photos of fungus, I take great pride in the cakes I bake and I love serving glowing kitchen magic.  I'm those kinds of witches, too, and I haven't even mentioned the herbs, or the roots, or the flowers.

Unbothered by Witch of a Mother

Ohio in July

Kangaroo Jedi

Pomegranate Almond Cake-- Symbolic and Tasty

Nine Layers for 9th Birthday
"Just bake 5 and cut them in half before stacking" said his uncle

7 in July

Almost a Hummingbird

Apparently my Mother-in-Law Knows
(she made this for my birthday)

Thoughts a Sennight Before Imbolc

I have not become more of a witch this year.

Between visiting Salem and staying with a friend with spell books over the summer, it became clear that that sort of witchcraft is not my thing.  And while the year has been emotionally taxing and politically frustrating, my personality is just not that b sort of witchy.

C-A July 2018.  Love is stronger than any craft.

After my dear friend C-A, the friend who had responded with such love to my initial post about witches ["I see the witch theme as having more of a sacred relationship to nature and a focus on the magical essence of life.  Maybe we can collaborate on some ideas for focuses through the year?"] died in September, before we had a chance to collaborate on discussing the sacred relationship to nature, I was nearly ready to stall the pursuit of witches indefinitely.

Yet by December, the seasons had changed again.  I had been given A Discovery of Witches and the rest of the All Souls Trilogy right after I picked up Harry Potter again, and I started reading novels of witches back to back (with a feminist space opera interlude for K.B. Wagers's Beyond the Chaos).  I just finished A Secret History of Witches this morning and pulled out Ellen Dugan's Garden Witchery to figure out what herbs to feature at the upcoming groundhog party.  The groundhog party has become my place to start or end themed years, as with last year's ten pie graduation, and I had already planned on lots of witchy touches to the party: candles, flowers, a cauldron of dry ice punch, flaming torches and the subtitle "A Summoning of Spring"

I flipped open Garden Witchery to the page about the sabbat of Imbolc.  The book, written by a suburban Missouri gardener, has practical family rituals for each of the eight pagan celebrations of the seasons.  Imbolc became St. Brigit's Day became Candlemas became Groundhog Day.  It is halfway between the solstice and the equinox, the time when days really are noticeably longer, when the weather of winter may be fierce but there are cracks in the grip of winter; it is clear that spring will comes.  For Imbolc, Dugan suggests arranging some flowers and candles in the house and then getting outside to watch the sun and do something observing nature, like taking the family to a wildlife refuge to look for eagles.   This sounds familiar.

Not my natural habitat

From all my recent reading, I've learned that witches celebrate the solstices and equinoxes (yep, I've thrown parties for those) and days in between: Imbolc/Groundhog Day as the light returns, May Day/Beltane, the harvest, and Halloween.  I've thrown parties, baked, and lit candles for those as well (many recorded on this blog).

I have been a gardener all of my life.  I wrote my 5th grade research paper on "Medicinal Uses of Herbs in Colonial America."  For 4-H Creative Cooks contents I proposed menus for May Day (with baked lemon bread), Midsummer's Eve (a lemon fool with blackberry sauce), comet watching, and the spring equinox (with a blueberry and kiwi yin-yang tofu cheesecake).  I started sending out Groundhog cards in 8th grade reminding friends to celebrate the season, whatever the season is, and my first party was 25 years ago.

So I haven't become any more of a witch.
I've always been one.