Under the baobab: Spring brings signs of hope in Centre County and beyond

“… Pick up your pen, and weeping, of February, in sobs and ink, Write poems, while the slush in thunder is burning in the black of spring.”- “Black Spring,” Pasternak

Happy spring, brothers and sisters. Rebirth has begun. The redoing can be done.

Can we be sure the plague is over? All we have is a proclamation from a somewhat hostile judge. She told us to take the masks off or, to be more accurate, we should never have put them on in the first place. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn’t have the authority. Really? Some of the dreaded numbers — deaths, hospitalizations — are down, yet the infections are still going up.

At the end of his pandemic year, Defoe said, “A dreadful plague in London was in the year sixty-five, which swept a hundred thousand souls away; yet I alive.” We might add in, 2022, a million lost the fight, but a few still stand upright. Neither judges nor doctors can truly tell us if it’s over. Science may show us the facts but the only sure way we can know if we have traversed the painful passage is to listen to our hearts.

Signs of hope are there.

I saw a dove traipsing after his mate on the wire above the house. Around town by the hundreds, our beautiful young people trip after each other in club lines, too soon half dressed in shorts and T-shirts, daring to hope that a true summer will blossom.

The Blue-White game kindles hopes of future winter bowl games in warm climates. Soon-to-be graduates flock to get photographed with the Lion, the stadium, the Allen Street gates, proud to have survived, no thrived, under the harshest two years ... ever.

Terry Watson launched his new book, “Welcome to the Sick Mind of a Sane Person” at Webster’s Bookstore Cafe. He’s already planning book No. 2.

The Next Stage has invited a real audience to a real theater, to see a real play, “Celadine” at The State Theatre.

“Rock the ‘80s” rocked The State Theatre with local groups: Anchor and Arrow, Cone of Silence, The Extractors, The Long Afternoon, JR Mangan Band, Miss Melanie, Spider Kelly and Velveeta. They performed in loving memory of Chris Hescox.

The School of Theatre’s Center Stage returned to live audiences at The Playhouse with a dip into fantasy, a production of the delightful musical “Brigadoon” directed and choreographed by Jennifer Delac.

People turned out in droves for the restart of the Paterno Family Beaver Stadium Run, which supports Special Olympics Pennsylvania. The true harbinger of spring is the happy laughter of children. An estimated 800 people, mostly preteens, attended the first WPSU Multicultural Children’s festival at their studios in Innovation Park. Organized by Tamra Fatemi-Badi, there were performances by Chaar Tae Kwon Do Martial Arts of State College, Classical Indian Dance Academy, Indian Classical Carnatic Singing, Roots of Life, Ten Thousand Villages and Tir Na Nog Irish Dance, and a Chinese Dragon Dance performed by the Chinese Students and Scholars Association.

Information tables were run by the Indian Graduate Student Association, the Iranian Student Association, Pan-APIDA Circle, Penn State’s Sustainability Institute, CenClear, NAACP and community members from Japan, Nigeria, Bulgaria, Romania and South Korea. Activities at the free event included cultural crafts for kids, displays of traditional clothing, and an international food area. Attendees stopped in the WPSU screening room to watch episodes of internationally themed PBS Kids programs such as “Let’s Go Luna!” and “Molly of Denali!” There was also a space for quiet activities.

No matter how painful or frightening we must gird our loins and move forward. A better world waits to be built. With courage and through love we can find joy.

“Beneath - the earth is black in puddles, The wind with croaking screeches throbs,And-the more randomly, the surer poems are forming out of sobs.”