Fish And Game

Hello World, Happy May! Ready or not, the new month will start on Monday, although I admit that it doesn't seem remotely possible, since it feels like it was just Valentines Day about 15 minutes ago. Of course, May Day has been celebrated by just about everybody there ever was, since just about the beginning of time, for just about every purpose under the sun, and no signs of letting up yet. Our friends at Info Please (and please feel free to go right ahead and visit their web site at www.infoplease.com and see for yourself) have this to say about it: ================================ May 1st, often called May Day, just might have more holidays than any other day of the year. It's a celebration of Spring. It's a day of political protests. It's a neo-pagan festival, a saint's feast day, and a day for organized labor. In many countries, it is a national holiday. ================================ They go on to explain that the ancient Druids were already celebrating spring with the revelries of Beltane, when the Romans came to town with their own spring festival known as Floralia, and eventually elements of the two events became intermingled over the course of time. Other early civilizations, such as in India and Egypt, held fertility festivals on the day, while in 8th century Germany, they honored an early Christian apostle, St. Walburga, with Walburgisnacht, where the faithful would engage in rituals to drive out the witches and demons among them. It was in medieval England that they began the tradition of dressing up in colorful flowers and ribbons, elaborate dancing around the Maypole, and the crowning of a May Queen. By the late 1800's, labor unions all over the world were fighting for the 8-hour day, and May 1st became known as Labor Day in several countries following the Haymarket Riots of 1886 in Chicago - although ironically, not here in this country, where it all started. In the 1950's, trying to distance themselves from the communist implications of the workers revolting, the Pope designated May 1 as the Feast of St. Joseph, while President Eisenhower declared it Loyalty Day instead. As if all this wasn't enough, on May 1 2006, protesters once again took to the streets across America with rallies, strikes, and consumer boycotts in support of immigration reform. Whew! Like the World Meteorological Organization retiring hurricane names once they create too much damage, I truly believe that The Holiday Police need to step in here and permanently close May 1st for any other purposes that people want to pile on top of it, since it's obviously already doing more than its fair share of the heavy lifting for a plethora of ideologies as it is. And for all of you Druids out there (and you know who you are) I don't want to hear any backtalk, believe me. A spate of chilly and wet weather recently has in no way slowed down the burgeoning progression of spring flowers on all sides, and their cheerful disregard of the cold and damp gives us courage to face the inclement weather with the same resolve. The bleeding heart is already a picture in pink, and we only have one checkered lily, but it's blooming its little heart out, believe me. The lamium has just started to put forth its sunny yellow flowers, but it won't be long before whole swaths of our yard are a sweeping sea of golden delight. Our doggedly resilient lily of the valley, which we have given up for dead many times, is holding its own in the flower beds against some pretty stiff competition. We also have a small and sturdy ground cover in the back yard, which I'm sure is widely recognized with horror as a pest by botanists everywhere, but we appreciate its jolly purple flowers, and applaud its stamina in the face of obstacles. And speaking of invasive interlopers, the dreaded garlic-mustard is already knee high, and to say that it's running amok throughout the property unchecked would be an understatement of epic proportions, I can assure you. Oh well, it was Ralph Waldo Emerson who once famously observed, “What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.” I would have to say there's no arguing with that. On the frozen front, the Rangers did somehow manage to boot the Canadiens out of the playoffs in 6 games, and advanced to the second round against the Ottawa Senators. The tattered remnant of first-round survivors is down to Anaheim, Edmonton, Nashville, New York, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and Washington DC at this point. In those two-sport cities, the hockey teams from Boston, Chicago, and Toronto have already been eliminated, and one of those cities was doomed to double failure in basketball as well, since Boston and Chicago played each other in the first round, unfortunately. All hopes were resting on the Wizards to hold off the Hawks, for a chance at both of the teams representing the nation's capital to make it into their respective second rounds. For the purposes of the playoffs, success in the NHL is measured in points, not necessarily the won-loss record, and over the course of 82 games, the conventional wisdom holds that a team must have at least 100 points to qualify for post-season play. In the regular season, it was the Capitals who ran away with it, compiling an impressive 55-19-8 record and racking up a whopping 118 points. On the other hand, Nashville squeaked into the playoffs with a mere 94 points, and promptly swept Chicago (109 points) right out on their backsides with impunity, and several other high-point clubs - Columbus (108), Minnesota (108), Montreal (103), and San Jose (99) - also failed to make it out of the first round. On the hoops side of things, the second round will be starting off with the likes of Boston, Cleveland, Golden State, Houston, San Antonio, Toronto, and Washington DC, plus the winner between the Clippers and Jazz, the only series to go the full 7 games. It was novelist Herman Melville who dreamed up the idea of a "Cinderella team," an unheralded underdog that enjoys on an unlikely winning streak in the championships, although ultimately losing to the powerhouse favorite at the end, alas. But if this was Hollywood writing the scripts, they couldn't do better than both Washington DC teams winning at the same time in two different sports. Besides, if it doesn't happen, we can chalk it up to the Curse of Hillary Clinton. In other sports news, such as it is, I admit to a life-long aversion to golf, as a boring waste of time, not only playing it (Mark Twain waggishly described the game as "a good walk spoiled") but also watching on television in the old days, I would liken it to watching paint dry. But like so many things from the past, golf has really changed over the years, and now, a robust crop of younger players use all manner of technology to enhance their game, and the broadcasters bring an equal amount of digital wizardry to their coverage, so it's really nothing like the hushed and stultifying snooze-fest of yesteryear, by any means. On our cable system, we have The Golf Channel as one of our hi-def choices, and after happening upon it, I found their broadcasts deceptively seductive. First of all, wherever the tournament is coming from, the scenery is outstanding, with lush green rolling courses, snow white sand, and all the beckoning blue water that anyone could ever hope for, all in one place. In between shots, the cameras pan lovingly over arrays of exquisite flowers, or interesting local wildlife enjoying the bounties of nature, such as pelicans, herons, rabbits, ducks, cranes, hawks, otters, owls, and egrets, for instance. They also don't show the play in order, but rotate between different players at different holes, which is a surprisingly effective tactic. It's nice to see the seasoned veteran sink a birdie putt to take the lead, or the dogged amateur battle out of trouble to save par, but I invariably find myself wondering, "Yeah, but whatever happened to that guy whose tee shot sailed over the crowd, hit a tree, bounced over the cart path, and wound up in the parking lot?" And then I just keep watching until they show me his second shot - but after that, I'm left with the mystery of the other fellow who artfully chipped out of a sand trap on one side of the green, only to roll into a water hazard on the other side, for heaven's sake. Interestingly (well, only to us, probably) since I've been watching, one of our cats, who previously showed no interest in the big-screen TV in the slightest, has become mesmerized with golf, and he will sit and watch it as long as it's on. He loves to see the little white balls roll along the green turf, and he often reaches out to bat at them as they go by. We used to have a cat that liked to watch hockey, but not since then have any of our resident felines taken up a sport with the fascination that Domino has for golf. Actually, what I find most amazing about it above all, is that at this time of year, when most of the play comes from clubs in the south or southwest, that each and every one of them appears to be primarily a resort for wayward alligators, which you would think would be considered terrifying by even the loosest standards. In fact, the lumbering creatures seem to make themselves right at home on the course, and even tournament staff trying to fend them off with brooms or rakes barely get their attention, much less make them move to any degree at all. Apparently, everyone accepts this "amphibian hazard" as "par for the course," as it were, and even the announcers rarely make mention of it, unless the gators are genuinely interfering with play - at which point, they send the poor caddy over to shoo it off. (AS IF!) It's a wonder to me that you don't hear more about golfers being chomped on by marauding alligators, although it's possible that instead of stringing up fences to keep the giant beasts off the links, the management just plies them with enough fish to keep them fat and happy, rather than seeing the players as their next meal. Well, all I can say is that as much as I want to believe that the alligator feeding crew is conscientious about their jobs, I have the feeling that the only way they're going to get me on a golf course at this point is in a suit of armor, thank you very much. And the Druids can just keep their snarky comments to themselves, if you please. Elle