Our Top Story: Daffodils Blooming

Now if only Obama can create jobs, lower the deficit, rein in the Wall Street cowboys, extricate the troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, modernize the infrastructure, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, heal the sick, raise the dead, arrange for the Cubbies to win the World Series…

Well, if health insurance reform can happen, anything is possible, right?

But enough about Washington politics. Let’s talk about daffodils and tulips and forsythia and the pale green glow that has appeared around the willow tree near Old Main.

When I left for Florida during spring break, my lawn still slept beneath its snowy coverlet. When I came back, rain and sun had unmade the bed, so I did what I always do in late winter: walk over to Tom Rogers’ place to see if anything was poking out of the ground.

To paraphrase old late-night TV commercials for boxed sets of every song ever recorded by Hank Snow, Tom’s gone now, but his garden lives on. So do his books.

Tom Rogers was a brilliant novelist and a brilliant horticulturist. He died in 2007 at the age of 79. If you crave spring in late winter – and who doesn’t? – Tom’s yard is where you’ll see the snowdrops and crocuses before they appear anywhere else around here.

I was not disappointed when I walked by on March 14. Then came a week of sun and warmth. The pace of spring accelerated. By the end of the week, daffodil shoots were up. During the weekend, some began to bloom. The tulips and the forsythia are right behind them.

I love those first warm days when everyone – EVERYONE – busts out of the house to bask and frolic. In his book about the Phillies’ glorious 2008 season, ESPN writer Jayson Stark (who spoke on campus the other day) wrote about the look on people’s faces during the Phils’ victory parade:

‘Theoretically, that ought to be impossible, right? To have that many people walking around at the same time on the same day, wearing that same look in their eyes — that blissful, life-is-great glow you wait your whole life for?’

I saw that glow as I cycled around State College last week. No one from the Sun Belt can comprehend it.

But let’s go back a week. Wild weather up and down the East Coast. My flight from Fort Lauderdale to LaGuardia delayed five hours. Squinting to see the lane lines as I drove over the RFK (nee Triboro) Bridge in the rain from Queens to Manhattan. Instead of going out with my daughters to eat and hear music, I wound up guzzling a beer, eating cold pizza from Patsy’s.

The next day, Saturday, my girls and I braved 50-mph winds to catch the Charles Addams exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York. I hear there’s talk of getting rid of the Addams mural in the ground-floor lobby of West Pattee. That would be a mistake. Addams is a delight. When you see his cartoons in the New Yorker, you appreciate the wiggy humor. When you see the originals on the gallery wall, you appreciate the artistry, the play of light and shadow, shadow and line.

Then, back into the howling gale. This was the kind of day where you brandish your umbrella like a shield. Everywhere, we saw umbrellas turned inside out by the wind, umbrellas abandoned in trash cans, umbrella carcasses on the street like broken-winged birds.

We even had an umbrella injury: As we struggled south on Madison Avenue the wind shifted, the brolly flew back and one of its spokes jabbed Sylvie in the forehead, drawing blood. I bet the ERs treated several umbrella injuries that day.

In the evening I saw Arthur Miller’s ‘A View from the Bridge’ with the superb Liev Schrieber and the surprisingly good Scarlett Johansson. Celebrity sighting of the trip: Former Disney honcho Michael Eisner sat two seats away.

Next day I was surprised to see buried coverage in the New York papers of what I thought was a front-page storm. The papers went nutso on the snows of January and February. This was mere rain. Turns out, though, that power outages were more widespread than during the snowstorms, there were numerous highway closures and tree topplings and more calls to 911 than there were on 9/11.

Another example of newspaper cluelessness: After the House passed the health care reform bill Sunday night what I most wanted from the Monday papers was clarification of what needed to happen next, process-wise, for the bill to become the law of the land. What I got was a series of great day for America/bad day for America quotes.

These New York and Washington journos need to go outside where we the people struggle with our umbrellas, rejoice as the daffodils bloom and slip in birthday greetings to our mothers (happy 88th, Mom!).