The Modern Meaning of March Madness

“Beware the Ides of March,” warned the soothsayer to Julius Caesar in the Shakespearean tragedy of the same name. We all should have been wary of the entire month of March this year. It was madness.

During March of never-to-be-forgotten 2020, we moved our clocks ahead one hour, and still we had the earliest vernal equinox in more than a century: March 19, at 11:49 PM EDT. The last time there was an earlier start to spring was 124 years ago.

Testing the gods, we moved our clocks ahead one hour in the very same mid-March week that we had a full moon and a Friday-the-13th. What could we have been thinking!

And then all hell broke loose when, the following week, most of us began to feel that we were in the midst of something unprecedented and unsettling: the spreading effects of a global pandemic, the worst felt in the US in 102 years. Most events, meetings and appointments were cancelled, most buildings and public places were closed. Some grocery store shelves stood bare. Then we were confined to quarters.

For many people, “March Madness” has usually meant getting together in crowds of people to wear our school colors and cheer for our favorite school and college teams. This year, “March Madness” has meant something different. . .perhaps that we are all in this together, just as long as we stay six feet apart.

JER