One of my daughter’s favorite quotes is this one by John Dryden: ‘Dancing is the poetry of the foot.’ My column today may combine these two skills even more.
Dancing…
Let’s start by reflecting on the Final Four. I didn’t pick any of these teams (Michigan State, Butler, West Virginia and Duke)!
March Madness surely did not disappoint this year. What a dance it has been! Two things can sum it up: the so-called ‘mid-majors’ and the upsets.
In my last column, I suggested that since the tournament started right around St. Patrick’s Day, people should favor the teams with green. I hope you listened, because three of the five green teams made it through to the second round, two went on to the Elite Eight and one (Michigan State) is representing the Big Ten in the Final Four. Go Spartans!
You know, it wasn’t until this past column that I realized that my column is read by powerful people outside my family members (who are required to read it). My sister Alice (again, REQUIRED to read this) read my last column, and she called a couple of days later to tell me Barack Obama had selected the same Final Four teams that I did. Who knew he read this?
I encouraged you all to enter the StateCollege.com bracket contest and go up against me and my picks. I am currently in second place, so I must send out my congratulations to Andy Wible. He’s the only one who ‘Beat Mike the Mailman!’ To all of you who entered StateCollege.com’s contest, I hope that you had as much fun as I did. Although, if Alex Herrmann had entered, we would have all looked pretty bad. Have you heard about this kid? He is an autistic teenager who went 48 and 0 in the first two rounds! The chances of that happening is one in 13,460,000! Alex said he had a little help from his brother Andrew. Way to go, guys!
… and Poetry
To compromise with my wife, who watched and cheered along with me throughout some of the big games, last week she took me to Penn State’s Student Programming Association Distinguished Speaker Series. The distinguished speaker was Maya Angelou. Unbelievable. Known as a Renaissance woman, she went from growing up in a segregated America to becoming one of the most recognized and respected writers of contemporary black literature.
This 81-year-old woman urged the 2,000-plus people in attendance to genuinely start appreciating others in our life. She also encouraged all of us to look at the rainbows in our clouds. Everyone there was mesmerized by her speech.
As my wife was about watching the basketball games, I was apprehensive at first about going to see Maya Angelou. But again, like my wife did regarding some of the games, I got into it and walked away feeling more cultured.
Dancing and Poetry
Anyone in a successful relationship will tell you that you have to grow and learn together, and that is exactly what we did. And you know what? Basketball and poetry have some amazing similarities. Both have a rhythm and depend on certain momentum. Both require deliverance with intelligence. And only with the perfect execution is the play or line successful. Poetry can be a play on words and some of basketball’s simplest drills is running the line.
This week, I ask any of you who have someone special — be it a significant other, sibling, best friend or whoever you like to pal around with — to try something the other person is really interested in. You never know how much you may be enlightened.
Besides, it’s like the inspiring Maya Angelou says: ‘In all my work what I try to say is that as human beings we are more alike than we are unalike.’
