Daily Journal
Spring’s arrival sends our spirits soaring
By Staff
Mar 10, 2020
We’re not out of the woods filled with barren trees just yet. Your furnace will still kick on frequently, you will still have to scrape ice off your car windshield some mornings and a kitchen table chair will remain the place to hang your coat a while longer.
But as sure as the sun, moon and wind, spring is on its way.
Humankind has long held a special feeling for the season which represents new life. That feeling is rooted in Christianity, and extends in all directions from there. As the Alexander Pope poem “An Essay of Man’’ so eloquently states, “hope springs eternal.’’
Our fondness for spring has spanned the ages, but a modern day and rather annoying phenomena is the practice of celebrating “holidays’’ weeks in advance. The marketing of Valentine’s Day started as soon as the calendar turned to 2020, and retailers have been hawking items related to St. Patrick’s Day for a month now, and the March 17 salute to the Irish is still a week off.
But St. Paddy’s Day reminders seem a bit more tolerable, as we know the “wearin’ of the green’’ will soon be followed by the need to cut lush green grass.
So, we savor the emergence of spring, which this year arrives at 10:50 p.m. March 19. That time frame represents the earliest spring arrival since 1896.
And while Pope’s poem is eloquent, perhaps the best summation of the season can be found in “The Rose,’’ a song written by Amanda McBroom and popularized by Bette Midler in a 1980 film by the same name. It goes like this:
”Just remember in the winter
Far beneath the bitter snow
Lies the seed that with the sun’s love
In the spring becomes the rose.”
May your personal rose bloom in the coming days.
