Alas, I am in mourning for the Butler Bulldogs. Saturday night’s game was all an NCAA tournament game should be, except for its final outcome. Actually, all four of the teams I was watching – Valparaiso, Missouri, St. Louis and Butler – are now done for the season.

So what now? My outlook for the remainder of the tournament may be summed up in the nostalgic theme from one of my childhood favorite cartoons:

That’s right. I’m going to root for underdogs. Louisville, Kansas, Indiana and Duke already have plenty of fans.

There are four teams from the bottom half of the regional brackets still in contention. In the West region, 9th seeded Wichita State knocked off top-seeded Gonzaga. (Just as an aside – Butler beat Gonzaga during the regular season. But I digress.) Also in the West, 13th seed LaSalle is still alive. Problem is, these two teams meet next, so who to root for? Wichita State lives up to its Shockers moniker, but LaSalle is the underdog of the matchup. This may be a game where it’s cool to root for everyone.

In the West, 12th seed Oregon is still alive, having beaten Oklahoma State and St. Louis University. I personally believe that the reason that Oregon was not seeded higher is due solely to its (shall we say quirky?) team nickname. Go Ducks! Beat Louisville!

And finally in the South, Florida Gulf Coast University, in it’s second year of eligibility for the tournament, has reached the Sweet 16 as a 15th seed. This is a dream team for an underdog fan. Plus there is enough black and gold still running in my veins to dream of a FGCU victory over Kansas. But first they need to play Florida. Whatever the outcome, Friday is going to be a great day for the Sunshine State.

More importantly, I would also like to wish everyone a blessed Holy Week. Easter is by far my favorite holiday. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is the real reason that there’s no need to fear.

The 2013 NCAA championship bracket was released yesterday. I would love to see my alma mater, Missouri, do well, but unfortunately Mizzou Arena is not the venue so I am not sanguine for the Tigers.

I am impressed that so many mid-major schools are participating in this year’s tournament, one of my favorite teams among them. The Butler Bulldogs first crossed into my radar three years ago. Laura’s middle school team, the Trinity Lutheran Lady Tigers, was making its second consecutive appearance at the Lutheran Basketball Association of America national tournament held at Valparaiso University. As one of 32 participating teams, we had some down time between games. Since we were in the heart of Basketball Central USA – Indiana – in the midst of the NCAA championship, the Butler vs. Syracuse (1st seed, West Region) game was broadcast on the local affiliate.

Butler’s undergraduate student body numbers just over 4000. Ten players – two thirds of their roster – came from Indiana high schools, as did their coach. I was charmed by the story of this team and their geeky 6’8″ forward Matt Howard (BTW he plays in France now). I was impressed by their young coach, Brad Stevens. He was calm, gentlemanly, and seemed always to bring out the best of his players without any drama. The game itself was a nail-biter with the Bulldogs upsetting Syracuse 63-59.

Two days later we watched Butler win again, this time vs. Kansas State (2nd seed, West Region), 63-56. The Bulldogs beat Michigan State by two points to reach the national championship game. Laura was rooting with me for Butler right up until the championship game, but she is a longtime Duke fan and bailed on me for the final. I truly thought Butler was going to win it all, but the final shot bounced back out and the Cinderella team finished second.

Then the Bulldogs did the same thing all over again in 2011, finishing second to Connecticut. They did not play in the 2012 tournament, but they are back in 2013, seeded 6th in the East Region. I remember senior Andrew Smith from the 2010 and 2011 tournaments but the rest of the players are new to me. Of special note, Butler is one of only two teams to beat 1st ranked and #1 West seed Gonzaga this season. Butler also defeated then top-ranked Indiana.

In closing, I’d like to compliment Butler University on its athletic mission statement. Wouldn’t it be great if all teams adopted this philosophy?

Go Dawgs! (And yes, go Mizzou!)

And finally a shout out to the TLS-Jeff City boys basketball team headed to the 2013 LBAA tournament in Valparaiso, the first Trinity appearance since the Lady Tigers in 2010. Go Tigers!

Last week’s post ended with how next summer Laura will return to San Antonio via Oklahoma City, the same route that led to meeting now-Governor Mary Fallin. Since then, I have discovered a couple of other coincidences:

• Mary Fallin was born in Warrensburg, where Missouri Girls State is held.
• Her husband was born on December 14. So was Phil!

Cue the Twilight Zone theme.

Life is chock full of strange little occurrences. Take the time that Hanna checked out a novel about Queen Esther from the library. It was a nondescript book with a plain cover that looked like it was hardly ever checked out. As she sat down to read it, something fluttered out from between the pages. She came running to show me a photo of Laura and a friend on a hike at Runge Nature Center.

Or the time I took the kids to the Jasmine Moran Children’s Museum in Seminole, Oklahoma following a fruitless attempt to visit the state capitol building, which unknown to me, was closed on Saturday. (Wait – isn’t Oklahoma where Mary Fallin is governor? But I digress.) This is an outstanding hands-on museum, but in an obscure location. At some point one of the kids misbehaved and I had to address him/her by all three names using the stern mommy voice. A pleasant older woman nearby asked, “Oh, are you the Hartman family from Jefferson City?” My astonishment must have showed, because she went on to explain that she and her husband had also come from Jefferson City and had noticed our names on the visitors’ log. What are the odds?

Speaking of odds – remember my One in a Million post? During the summer of 2009 I traveled to Chicago to attend a national symposium on acoustic neuroma, which I have never had (although it was one of the possibilities ruled out in the MRI looking for the cause for my hemifacial spasms), but the conference featured workshops on facial paralysis that I thought would be helpful. Several people I knew from an online support forum were also there. Later when I joined Facebook, I looked some of them up. Back then, checking out my friends’ friends was an efficient way to find people I wanted to contact, but there were also some unexpected twists:

• Erna was one of the first few high school chums I connected with. I fully expected to find common high school buddies among her friends, but I did not expect to see Kay, an acoustic neuroma friend. They both live in Texas, but how did they know each other? Turns out that Erna’s husband and Kay are cousins.
• Another acoustic neuroma friend, Cheryl, who lives in Iowa, sent me a message asking about my high school friend Stephen, who now lives in Colorado. She thought that she used to live next door to his grandparents. Was his mother named Helga? Well of course she was!

Two of my classmates from the same small Midwest high school linked to two unrelated persons that share the same rare surgical side effect as I have. It’s a small world and social media is making it even smaller.

Do you have an interesting coincidence story? Tell me about it in a comment.

As my family returned home from Grandma and Grandpa’s house one fine day several years ago, where my kids had been royally spoiled (a grandparent’s prerogative), I was trying to explain to them how things had changed since I had been their age. Soda pop, for example, was a rare treat, maybe once every month or two. At our house it was usually served with pizza, another treat.

Furthermore, in the “olden days,” we either watched a TV show when it was scheduled or we missed it. There was no videotape or TiVo. There were only three stations, and no cable. We went to see movies at the theater (although we watched The Wizard of Oz on TV once a year, as long as we were home that night) because there weren’t films on VHS or DVD. There were no personal computers; in fact, I can remember my mom buying my dad one of the first handheld calculators for his birthday. It cost over $50 and was several times the size of an as-yet nonexistent iPod Touch. We had no cell phones or even cordless phones.

There weren’t even music CDs yet, much less MP3 players. We listened to record albums and cassette tapes. Our Christmas or birthday wish list might have included a battery-operated transistor radio. My older brother had an 8-track tape player in his truck. That was pretty cool, I told the kids, because I only had an AM radio in my Ford Pinto. My son was incredulous at this bit of information. “Mom,” he exclaimed, “You mean it only worked in the morning?”

After the laughter died down and I explained what an AM radio is, I got to thinking about how much can change over a lifetime. Take, for example, Laura Ingalls Wilder. We know from her books that the Ingalls family crossed the frontier in a covered wagon. She describes the trials and tribulations of everyday pioneer life — how to build a log cabin, boil down maple syrup, braid straw hats and butcher a hog (complete with instructions for headcheese). Laura witnessed the building of the transcontinental railroad, and described a trip on the train in By the Shores of Silver Lake. Later she traveled again by covered wagon with husband Almanzo and daughter Rose to Mansfield, Missouri, where she would spend the rest of her life.

During Laura’s lifetime the telephone, phonograph, incandescent light bulb, Kodak camera, gasoline-powered automobile, airplane, television and atomic bomb were invented. She died in 1957 at the age of 90, just a few months before the launch of Sputnik I ushered in the space age.

In her books, Laura Ingalls Wilder left behind a rich written record of her frontier experiences. It’s likely that someone you know also has an interesting history. My eldest daughter’s great-grandmother was acquainted with (but did not much like) Charles Lindbergh. She also drew pen-and-ink images for 1920s Famous-Barr ads published in the St. Louis Post Dispatch. My husband’s father went to Europe as a young MP just after WWII ended, and among other experiences, delivered war criminals to Dachau just months after its liberation. My great-uncle was friends with Walt Disney and was honorary mayor of Disneyland when it opened.

I find reminiscing with older family members and friends more interesting than contemplating the changes that have occurred in my lifetime, probably because I take my own experiences for granted. But that conversation with my kids reminded me how important it is to take the time to talk to family, friends and elderly neighbors about their lives. Like the Little House books, their memories can bring history to life.

So yes, it is Monday already, and I have to confess that I did not make the time last week to write a post for today. This morning I dug through my old documents file and came up with this gem, written November 9. 1994,  ten days before Phil and I married. I had completely forgotten about this and a few other poems and articles.

I hope you enjoy the poem. I know I was happy to rediscover it, although now I have yet another item on my to-do list: convert these old documents to Microsoft Office before I am no longer able to open AppleWorks.

ODE TO CONNUBIAL BLISS
by Sara (10-days-and-counting) Hartman

Phil and Sara met one day,
And soon after fell in love.
They agree on nearly everything,
Truly a match from above.

But . . . a controversy arises!
Across a crowded room
A Windows machine and an Apple face off.
Which will be meeting its doom?

Phil, the System Administrator,
Never strays from the PC track.
But Sara, while computer bilingual,
Prefers the more elegant Mac.

Can anything resolve this impasse?
Will the romance go up in flames?
No, for Hanna knows the secret to happiness
Is that both have some really neat games.

So, the fusing of different elements —
And operating systems as well —
Yields a two-computer nuclear family:
Hanna and Sara and Phil.

P.S. Eighteen years plus later, we are still a two-OS family. We have increased our number of children by two, and our number of computers by some ridiculous multiple of that.

Aww, thanks to Jane Heitman Healy, my friend, fellow writer and blogger (Read, Learn and Be Happy), for tagging me with my very first weblog award. The Liebster Award is given to up-and-coming bloggers with fewer than 200 followers. Like me! In German, Liebster means sweetest, kindest, nicest, dearest, beloved, lovely, sweetheart, pleasant, valued, cute, endearing, and welcome. Also like me!

Having never heard of the Liebster before, I was curious and ran a Google search. There is no parent site and it is not listed in Wikipedia. Every hit I found was an entry in a blog that had received the award. I don’t think it’s possible to trace back to its origin, but interestingly, the rules vary from site to site. Some simply require a thanks to the nominator and identifying three other weblogs, while others ask for thanks plus five random facts, questions answered and asked, and other weblogs. Some three of each. The invitation I received asked for eleven.

I don’t generally participate in or pass along quizzes, but I like the idea of promoting obscure weblogs, so here goes.

(Fore the record, when I wrote this, the list items were numbered. I have no idea why letters show up instead.)

Rules:

1. Post 11 random things about yourself.
2. Answer the questions the nominator set for you.
3. Create 11 questions for your nominees.
4. Choose 11 other blogs with fewer than 200 followers to nominate and link them to your post.
5. No tag backs, but please leave a comment on the nominator’s post so that s/he can learn more about you and see who you nominate.

I: Random Facts

1. I have been struck by lightning.
2. Al Green sang a lullaby to my baby bump just ten days before I delivered my firstborn.
3. I have had brain surgery.
4. My first car was a Ford Pinto and one day I drove 12 members of my church youth group home in it.
5. I have never broken a bone, but have had a ruptured eardrum.
6. I am 101 days older than my husband.
7. I like prime numbers. Such as 101.
8. I do not like asparagus or Brussels sprouts, although I understand this is genetic. I don’t like lima beans either, but have nothing to blame it on other than their texture.
9. One of my books is available as an iPad app.
10. I was described as “indefatigable” in a reference letter from someone who is now a Missouri supreme court justice.
11. I have long fingers, but short toes.

II: Jane’s Questions:

1. What is your favorite book? The Complete Works of Jane Austen.
2. Who is your favorite author? Jane Austen, followed closely by James Herriott and Laura Ingalls Wilder.
3. What was your favorite vacation? Christmas 2011 in Vietnam visiting our daughter Hanna.
4. What is your favorite song/singer/band/musical type? My favorite is jazz – Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan. But I also like 60s pop – the Beatles, Monkees, and Herman’s Hermits.
5. What’s the most unusual food you have eaten? Probably spicy roasted beetles that a missionary brought to our church.
6. What day of the week is your favorite? Whatever day it is.
7. What is your favorite movie or TV show? Movie: The Princess Bride. TV Show: Revenge.
8. Do you prefer dogs, cats, or other (if other, specify)? I have a cat and a dog and love them both. But my ideal pet is a cat, specifically a cuddly lap cat, because they are lower maintenance.
9. What is something amazing about you? I got a perfect score on the logic section of the GRE.
10. Do you prefer reading hard copy or online? At home, hard copy. On the road, it’s much easier to pack my iPad, especially since I can check out e-books from our library and download free books through the Kindle and Nook apps.
11. How often do you use your public library? I pick up my son at the library Monday – Friday after school. I go inside once or twice a week.

III: Questions for my Nominees:

1. If I had my own comic book, I would be Indefatigable Girl (see Random Fact 10/J above). What would your superhero name and trait be?
2. Mac or PC?
3. How long have you been keeping a weblog?
4. What is  your earliest childhood memory?
5. If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?
6. What is your favorite holiday?
7. What color are the walls in your kitchen?
8. What is the last movie that made you laugh out loud?
9. Are you right- or left-handed?
10. Do you own more scarves or pairs of shoes?
11. What type of vehicle, if any, do you generally drive?

IV: My nominees:

Sorry, I am not going to be able to identify eleven more weblogs. First, I am not sure how to tell whether some blogs have fewer than 200 followers. Second, I won’t nominate a site unless I actually know the author. Third, Jane beat me to some, and I don’t want to hit them again. Finally, I have an inkling that some of my really serious blogger friends would not like being tagged.

These sites are all written by folks that I know from the Faith and Writing Workshop at Concordia Seminary last summer:

• Thinking Through My Fingers
• Craziness Uncensored
• The Kingdom of the Left
• Writer’s Cramp
• Renew a Right Spirit

V: Completed. Hi Jane!

Yes, these are a few of my favorite things. You already know my tops in television and movies, but here are another dozen random faves.

Favorite guy: my husband, Phil Hartman. He personifies all twelve parts of the Boy Scout law, plus a few more exemplary characteristics. He likes to build furniture and make jelly and takes good care of his mother. He has an extremely responsible job and works hard so that I am able to stay home and raise our family. He is also the guy you would want by your side in case of a zombie apocalypse.

Other favorite people: my children – Hanna, Laura and Joseph, all three wonderful and unique blessings. Each of them thinks he or she is my favorite, so I must be doing something right.

Favorite authors: first place, Jane Austen for characters and dialog; second place, James Herriott for description; third place, Laura Ingalls Wilder for nostalgia. Honorable mention, Dr. Seuss for whimsy and rhyme.

Favorite color: pink. This is a bit ironic since I don’t like red. At all.

Favorite holiday: Easter – the death and resurrection of Jesus are the bedrock of Christianity. There is less extraneous hoopla than Christmas, and springtime is more pleasant than winter. Plus the music is great, made even more enjoyable following the dismal minor keys of Lent.

Favorite actor: I may have a tiny crush on Mark Harmon but my all-time favorite is Jimmy Stewart.

Favorite teacher: Mrs. White, high school math. She was a tiny woman, impeccably dressed and groomed, and wore Saran Wrap around her white cuffs to protect them from the wax pencils she used to write proofs on the overhead projector. She was extremely intelligent and a good teacher. She retired when my class graduated, so we were fortunate to have her all the way through.

Favorite food: strawberries. No sugar, cream, or shortcake necessary. Just a big bowl of strawberries, all by themselves.

Favorite wine: In general I prefer dry reds such as shiraz or cabernet sauvignon, but in warmer weather I’m partial to white zinfandel.

Favorite gadget: my iPad. Not nearly as bulky as my old iBook and much more versatile. I also really like my hot pink Otter box.

Favorite apps: iCal, Scrabble and of course, The Ten Plagues.

Favorite on-line game: If you don’t know about Cricklers, stop reading right now and go straight here. Best word game ever, and extremely addictive. I contributed to the geography and US president series until life started getting too hectic. Now I admire Michael and Barbara Crick even more for publishing puzzles every day without fail. Unlike web logs, news puzzles can’t be written ahead of time.

Back when the kids were smaller, I helped my friend Kris Arthur with her summer enrichment camps. One year I taught a week’s worth of classes on Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. The first day we studied the history of the celebration; during the rest of the week we made tissue paper marigolds and papel picado (intricately cut tissue paper banners), created calacas (festive skeletons), baked pan de muerto (bread of the dead) and designed calavera (skull) masks. The significance of each of these was explained in my class handout, which I adapted for this post. I hope that you find Día de los Muertos as fascinating as I do.

The Day of the Dead festival in Mexico (October 31 – November 2) is a blend of ancient Aztec harvest rituals and the Catholic celebration of All Saints Day. The observance of Day of the Dead varies by region, but generally involves welcoming the souls of the dead back into their homes and visiting the graves of close relatives. Día de los Muertos is not a time to grieve, but to celebrate and remember the dead. The souls of children, or los angelitos (little angels), are greeted the first night, while adult souls are welcomed the second night. To end the holiday, calevera (skull) masks are worn to chase lingering souls back to the land of the dead.

Many families prepare an elaborate altar with offerings (ofrenda) to honor their deceased family members. The altar is constructed in a place of honor within the home, sometimes using tables and boxes to form a pyramid of three or more levels, covered by a white tablecloth.

A washbasin, soap, towel, mirror and comb are placed nearby so that spirits may freshen up when they return home. Altars, which remain in place until November 4, include these elements:

Candles
Four candles at the top level represent north, south, east and west. Additional candles are lit for each dead family member, with an extra to make sure nobody has been left out. The candles represent hope and faith, and burn all night so that there is no darkness. They also provide a place for the dead to warm their hands.

Incense
Copal is the sap of a Mexican tree, burnt as incense. In the Aztec culture, it was an offering to the gods. On a Day of the Dead altar, the scent attracts the spirits of the dead and guides them home. It also wards off evil.

Flowers
Fragrant marigolds are traditional Day of the Dead flowers. In the Aztec culture the marigold was known as the flower of 400 lives. Marigolds are placed on the altar so that their scent may guide souls home. Sometimes paths of marigold petals are made from the cemetery to a home. For los angelitos, baby’s breath and white orchids are used.

Food and Drink
A basic Día de los Muertos altar will include:
• agua (water), to quench thirst and for purification,
• sal (salt), the spice of life, and
• pan de muerto (bread of the dead), food necessary for survival
More elaborate altars may include sweets, harvest fruits and vegetables and the favorite foods and drinks of each family spirit. Three sugar skulls, representing the Trinity, are often placed on the second level of an altar.

Calacas
Calacas are handmade skeletons representing the dead, usually depicting their occupations and hobbies. Calacas show an active and joyful afterlife and are funny and friendly rather than frightening and spooky. Along with the smell of favorite foods, calacas help spirits locate the right house. Calacas have emerged as an art form indigenous to Mexico.

Papel Picado
The Aztecs used paper banners in rituals. Papel picado is colorful tissue paper cut into intricate designs and strung around the altar. Traditional colors for papel picado are:
• morado (purple), to signify pain, suffering, grief and mourning
• rosado (pink), for celebration,
• blanco (white), for purity and hope
• amarillo y anaranjado (yellow and orange), for the marigold, sun and light
• rojo (red), representing the blood of Jesus (Catholic) and the life blood of humans and animals (Aztec)
• negro (black), for the land of the dead

Personal Items
Favorite items and mementos of the departed are added to the altar, including children’s toys, household saints and photos of those honored, plus items for everyday living, such as eating utensils, drinking gourds, serapes, and musical instruments.

In Romeo and Juliet, my least favorite of Shakespeare’s plays, he asserted that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Maybe so, but those misguided twits were still dead by the end of the play, and most of us still have strong feelings, either positive or negative, about our own name.

The name Sara wasn’t as common when I was growing up as it is now. My parents borrowed my name from Jazz singer Sarah Vaughn, but opted for the German spelling, dropping the “h” from the end. That was also not as common in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and not only did most people misspell my name, but there weren’t any nifty personalized items like bicycle license plates or keychains available with my variation.

I got in trouble once when my first grade teacher called me “Sally” and I did not answer her. She thought I was being insubordinate. In reality, at age five I was blissfully unaware that Sally was a nickname for Sara(h). However, that incident led to my brothers and sister calling me Sally for years when they wanted to tease me. Much later I named my dog Sally in memory of that incident.

But I still liked my name. I’m glad I wasn’t named for one of my grandmothers, in which case I would be either Frieda or Hilda and forced to go by my middle name (as my mom did), or come up with a nickname.

The name Sara means princess, which I also liked, but which supplied an odd contrast with the meaning of my surname – “hedge dweller.” Surely a princess would live in a castle rather than a hedge! Hmm . . . maybe it really referred to a hedge maze surrounding the castle. Yeah, that must be it.

When I got married, my names still didn’t match. “Princess” and “Deer hunter?” Again, a princess would certainly have someone to slay deer for her, in a manner in which she would never have to witness the process. Fortunately, my husband does just that.

I also became one of at least three Sara Hartmans (or would the plural be Sara Hartmen?) in the Jefferson City area, including my niece and the daughter of my children’s principal. (The principal’s daughter has since married, but we still get mixed up now and then, usually when my path crosses with one of her former classmates.) This plethora of local Sara Hartmans made me wonder who else shares “my” name.

A Google internet search turned up many student athletes (cool!), a substance abuse counselor, a few YouTube videos, and a crew member for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2. There is a reference to a joke sent by “Macintosh friend Sara Hartman.” That could be me as I use a Macintosh and do have at least a couple of friends, but the joke, though clever, is not one I would send. There are a myriad of genealogy hits, and plenty of social networking profiles, but no reference to any of my books until page 3. Blow to ego.

Do you or someone you know have an unusual or interesting name? Email me or leave a reply. It may turn up in a future post.