Cultural Signs of Spring

Here in Michigan, days are getting longer, robins are appearing in our yards, and the only remnants of snow reside at the edges of parking lots where mountains of snow had previously been plowed up. Physical signs aside, there are also cultural indications that it is now springtime in the American Midwest. Here are three.

Mulch bags. The corner gas stations stack up palette after palette of yard mulch in see-through plastic bags. This is the sign for do-it-yourself gardeners that it’s time to rake up lawn debris and any recalcitrant leaves that blew into the flower beds after leaf rakes were put away for the winter. Once the beds are prepped, a new layer of mulch gets added to hold in moisture for the plants and to dress up the beds’ appearance. The shredded bark mulch comes in two formats: natural “wood-colored” and tinted (red, black, or dark brown). At my local Speedway station, the palettes rose over six feet tall and completely obscured the gas pumps from view.

March Madness. You may have noticed lots of extra attention on basketball around you recently. Men’s and women’s college tournaments have started. The men’s tourney, the second-most popular sports event after the Super Bowl, recently jumped from 64 to 68 qualifying teams. Perennially, the biggest controversy surrounds whether or not your favorite team is selected and then how high (or low) your favorite is ranked in the pairings. The team pairings are arranged in “brackets,” which are printed out and shared among friends and co-workers, often with wagers placed on the outcomes. Looking at the bracketed pairings below, you can see that the left and right margins are filled with specific team names, with the winners of each bracket advancing towards the championship slots in the middle of the chart.

The tournament seems “mad” because of the frenzied beginning to the competition. After a preliminary play-in round with the lowest 8 teams, the first full round begins with 32 games in two days, with lots of TV coverage and highlight reports—a basketball lover’s dream. After the initial Thursday/Friday round, 32 teams are eliminated. After the second round (Saturday/Sunday), 16 more teams are eliminated. The goal is to finish the first weekend of play by advancing to the Sweet Sixteen. The second weekend eliminates eight teams in the third round and four more teams in the fourth round, taking the winners from the Elite Eight to the Final Four.

Reaching the hallowed ground of the Final Four gives prestige and national attention to those universities. This year, none of the top-ranked men’s teams made it to the Final Four. All the top seeds were upset in earlier rounds by underdogs. Two of those underdogs (Butler and Virginia Commonwealth Universities) will play each other in round five for a chance to advance to the championship game. The other two teams in the semifinals are traditional heavyweights of college basketball, the Universities of Kentucky and Connecticut. The semifinal and final rounds will be played in Houston, TX this year. Culture tip: During this three-week period, it’s customary to ask your sports-minded friends and co-workers, “How are your brackets doing?”

Spring cleaning. After staying indoors for four months, my fellow Michiganders are going stir-crazy, afflicted with a psycho-social malady known as cabin fever. As springtime nears, people feel the need to begin cleaning up their cluttered homes. My wife and I began by having a handyman install some new shelving in our closets. This led to the desire for more home improvements: new wall outlets, lighting inside closets, new bathroom fixtures and lights, and wall repairs and painting. Once stir-crazy people get started, it’s hard to stop.

The next target, once we got enthusiastic about cleaning, was to re-organize our junk drawer. Every American kitchen has a junk drawer. It’s the place for random objects that don’t logically belong elsewhere. Below is a photo of our junk drawer contents emptied onto the counter. It contained scissors, package cutters, screwdrivers, pens, binder clips, rubber bands, electrical adapters, twisty-ties, screws, paper clips, a measuring tape, picture hangers, nails, scotch tape, pliers, adhesive pads, gripper tongs, two wire mesh baskets, batteries, misplaced gizmos, and unidentifiable junk.

The first thing any organizational expert will tell you is that you never need any more than six twisty-ties in your junk drawer. I counted over 50. I threw away most of them, saving a half-dozen for daily use and putting the fancy gold and silver ones into our decorations cupboard along with the colored ribbons.
50+ twisty ties (too many for one drawer!)

binder clips (work better than potato chip bag clips)

picture hangers and nails

Next, I sorted out loose objects that had other “homes” around the house. Nuts, bolts, and screws went into the appropriate organizer bins on the garage workbench. Batteries were taken there as well. Extra plastic caps for the opened dog food can went into the dog supplies cupboard (we only need one cap at a time in the kitchen!). Paper clips went into my office. Finally, into the garbage went broken rubber bands and other unidentifiable odds and ends that had no recognizable purpose—other than cluttering up our junk drawer.

When I finished, I had a neatly organized junk drawer, arranged so that everything was findable. I often tell my wife, “If you can’t find it, you don’t really own it.” We are often searching for stuff we know must be somewhere; we just don’t remember where!

newly organized drawer!

One funny final note. Two days after the Great Drawer Re-Organization, I found a thingamabob in the kitchen. I wasn’t sure what it was or where it went. So, I threw it in the junk drawer, figuring that was a good place to keep it for the time being! In two years, I’ll probably throw it away when I’m cleaning it out again.

New Vocabulary and Cultural Concepts (mulch)
robins = the robin is the official state bird of Michigan
remnants = leftover pieces
mulch = shredded organic material from trees, used to top-dress bedding plants and keep moisture in. Another mulching material is ground-up tree branches. The chunks are less consistent in shape and texture, less attractive, sold in bulk (instead of bags), and therefore, less expensive.
palette = a flat wooden form for holding stacked materials, easily picked up and moved by forklift trucks
lawn debris = miscellaneous pieces of trash accumulated under the winter’s snow (sticks, paper, cigarette butts, etc.)
recalcitrant = uncooperative, resistant

New Vocabulary and Cultural Concepts (basketball)
alliteration = a feature of creative writing which puts together words with the same first letter (March Madness, Sweet Sixteen, Elite Eight, Final Four). Americans love alliteration.
perennially = every year
ranked pairings = The top 64 teams are separated into four regional competitions (with 16 teams in each region). The #1 ranked (or seeded) team plays the lowest team, #16 while the #2 *team plays the #15 team, and so on.
mad = often used to mean “angry,” but here it means “crazy”
frenzied = crazy, wild, busy
hallowed = holy, sacred
favored (or favorite) teams = top-ranked teams
underdog teams = teams predicted to lose
to be upset = to lose to a lesser-ranked (non-favored) team

New Vocabulary and Cultural Concepts (spring cleaning)
stir-crazy = feeling uncomfortable because of inactivity
afflicted = having (a disease)
malady = illness
cabin fever = feeling like you’ve been locked inside your small cabin for too long
cluttered = messy, disorganized
handyman = a person who is handy (skilled) at many jobs (carpentry, plumbing, painting, etc.)
junk = stuff
gizmos = for a full description, see this blog
twisty-ties = thin pieces of wire wrapped in paper or plastic, used to close the end of bread bags, etc.
odds and ends = miscellaneous things
thingamabob = see here
for the time being = for now, for the present time