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Namaste

Namaste my dear friends in the blogosphere.  Tuesday morning started off with the realization and confirmation that another icon of my youth was indeed taken too early.  Today Tom Petty is playing his guitar with George in the great beyond.  Consequently, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers and The Travelling Wilburys provided the soundtrack for my morning commute.

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The soundtrack brought some solace and lots of nostalgia.  Petty’s songs played with heavy rotation in my house.  Inevitably, these songs remind me of my parents and all the great times we had as a family growing up.  Not surprisingly, as my kids have spent many their summers with Minnesota, these same songs conjure up sweet memories of their time in Minny with my folks.  Music unites us, our collective experiences and the generations.  One simply cannot ignore or question the power that music has to shape our lives.

Tonight, after too long of an absence, I finally made it back to Burn Fitness for yoga with my beloved yoga teacher Monica.  Oh boy, am I going to hurt tomorrow.   Undeniably, my return to yoga was long overdue for both my physical and mental well being.   After a year of pain and grief, tonight’s class felt like a welcome release.   As I work to get rid of the Irma weight, I’ve made the commitment to myself to take time and devote it to my yoga practice . This is long overdue as all of the running and Zumba are quite taxing on my body.  Meanwhile, yoga is the perfect anecdote to keeping my body in peak physical shape.

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Post yoga, its all about the MLB wildcard game between my Minnesota Twins and the New York Yankees.  There’s something alluring and thrilling about baseball in October.  It definitely peaks my interest significantly more than the regular season.  We just turned the game on and its tied 4-4 at the bottom of the 4th.  We’re already into our bullpen.  Consequently, this isn’t the best harbinger for a favorable outcome for my Twins.  If the Twins lose, work will surely be miserable tomorrow with all the Yankees fans in the office.   Let’s go Twins!

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Worn With Pride

Uniform, jersey, sweater it has many names.  It is symbolic of the high level of commitment it took to attain it and symbolic of the club which is represents.  There are a number of great quotes involving uniforms about what it means to be an athlete.

Brooks’ quote is legendary and I think most of us remember it from the movie Miracle or from the Lake Placid games.  The philosophy of playing harder for your team than for yourself is a key component of hockey culture.  It is also a critical component of what made his 1980 team so special.  In 1980, the team was comprised of college players mostly from University of Minnesota (Go Gophers!) and Boston University.   Just as they do today, my Gophers and Boston University enjoy a healthy rivalry on the ice.  In order to get his players to put their egos and these college rivalries aside, he needed to unite them around a common goal and that was playing for the name on the front of their jersey Team USA.   Brooks was a genius.

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Clemente’s quote speaks to the pride that athletes feel when they put on the sweater.   At the professional athlete, I cannot imagine how amazing it must feel.  Major League Baseball is the pinnacle of baseball and to make it to that pinnacle after years of hard work must feel otherworldly.  The pride he, and his family, must have felt the first time he put on that MLB jersey are something he will probably never forget.  I remember the first time my sons’ put on their travel hockey jerseys.  The smiles on their face went from ear to ear.  You could see the pride the felt in their achievements and they carried their heads a little bit higher.

Lastly, I’ll leave you with my favorite quote on a uniform and it comes from my favorite brassy gal Mae West, who as always said it best and wasn’t wrong.

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