"They're Playin' Bas-ket-baaallll..."

...and it came to pass, in the gray days of March, that the Lord looked down on his American people and said:

"Hey, word up, there's nothin' happenin' down there. This is neither spring, nor winter, neither hot nor cold. It is not good to have man living in these doldrums of halfway between.

"So let us shaketh things up a bit. Let us make of March a special time, that shall be henceforth known as 'Madness.'* At this time, men shall procure a roundball, made of leather, filled with the breath of the wind, and shall bring it to a 94-foot hardwood court. There, they shall string cotton beneath a wide orange cylinder of metal, one at each end of the court, at a height of 10 feet from the floor. And groups of men shall band together, and shall make it a mission to launch the roundball through the cylinder, so that it makes a special music through the cotton cords. And yea, verily, when the roundball passeth through the cotton net, there shall be rejoicing and great jubilation in many lands.

"They shall do this in the city; they shall do this in the country. They shall do this in the small town, in the places time forgot. They shall do this in the Ivy League and in the Midwest Athletic Conference, on the Atlantic coast and in the heartlands; in the Mountain West and the Pacific lowlands; and the people shall behold it and marvel.

"And let us make this an annual feast, a time when small men can dream big dreams. Let us celebrate and rejoice, and make merry, when the Big Dancing begins. And let March be forever blessed with this glorious festival of team colors and cheerleaders, slammin' and jammin', 'diaper dandies' and buzzer-beaters...to bring joy and craziness to all my people."

And God saw it...and it was very good.

Let there be Roundball!!!!!!!

Janny
(*Yes, we are aware that the IHSA claims that Illinois High School Basketball was the original "March Madness," and we have no doubt whatsoever that this is true, as we can remember this term from way before it was used for the NCAA Tournament. We have merely exercised a little poetic license here, and trust that the reader will be accommodating.)

***(Reprinted from March, 2009)***

What's On Your Liszt For This Week?

This is on mine...

Happy Musical Monday!

Janny

Mindful Coffee

...no, I never heard of it, either. But...! 

I love my morning coffee. Or afternoon coffee. Or, on some occasions, even evening coffee. Which is why, IMHO, the Keurig is among the best things ever invented. All that coffee, one cup at a time, whatever flavor you fancy...and quick to make.

BUT...lately, I've had the *other* kind of coffee, too. No, not perked on the stove (although that's still among the better ways to make a pot)...but perked from grounds in my Keurig. As in, hand-scooping the grounds into one of those reusable cups you insert into the coffeemaker. Also for one cup at a time.

But a whole lot messier. Which means that every time you make one of THOSE cups, you have to really think about it. In terms of the cleanup work involved. Because coffee grounds, I'm here to tell you, migrate worse than spaghetti sauce toward a white blouse. No matter how careful you are in measuring out those grounds into that teeny little cup, inevitably some will...leak out.

Not to mention the cleanup of the used grounds afterward.

So, then, I got to wondering...

If you need to take care, and extra time, to make an individual cup of coffee...

...does that make it MINDFUL?

As opposed to just tossing another premade pod into the machine and brewing a second or third cup?

And do I get extra credit, then, on the "mindfulness" scale...for making the coffee more from scratch? Not to mention extra points for wiping up every spare speck of coffee grounds?

It's an interesting question, I think.

😇

I mean, hey--sometimes you need to take your meditation points where you get 'em.

But I also gotta say: sometimes, folks, I just like my coffee mindless. Snatch a pod, stick it in, push the button, and go.

Does that make me shallow?

Am I missing a chance for extra-deep thoughts while I scrub out a reusable cup?

Or...?

Yeah. 

I doubt that'll keep ME up nights, either. 😛

Thoughts?

Janny

[[Photo by Ante Samarzija on Unsplash]]