Abba Anthony said, ‘A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, “You are mad, you are not like us.”’

–Sayings of the Desert Fathers

Today’s Pennsylvania Dutch word of the day is Gaardengraabfiewer, literally “garden-digging fever.” I don’t have context for it, but I take it to mean that desperate itch, felt too early in the spring, to get out and start working. Honk if this sounds familiar.

At my window feeder this morning: goldfinches, bluebirds, a white-throated sparrow, a brown-headed nuthatch, a robin struggling to stay on the perch, an equally large but more delicate-footed gray mockingbird, and of course the ubiquitous house finches. I will not make some fool claim about a peaceable kingdom, as in fact the house finches are little bullies and the mockingbird took evident pleasure (or am I only projecting?) in driving two of them away. But I did observe that the mockingbird then sat on the power line and watched while the nuthatch enjoyed the space he had opened, so—who knows what they are thinking?

March here and now is neither reliably in like a lion nor out like a lamb, but altogether like a passive-aggressive cat who may just as easily curl up purring on your lap or scratch out your eyes, and there is no knowing which until it happens.

Can’t take any more news? Here’s a coping strategy from Zippy the Pinhead.

I’d been wanting for some time to carve a clock… here it is. The difficulty, for me, was coming up with a design that had the necessary 12-fold symmetry without losing its flow. I think the central medallion works.

The clock works, too, though I wish I’d photographed it at a more aesthetically pleasing time, like a quarter after ten or twenty to four. Oh well. Only 8x8 inches, that being the widest basswood I can get, but the numbers are carved deep enough to read easily from across the room—though raking light helps, as always.

This one went on the wall of my studio (in the transition from “office” to “studio” I realized that with my laptop shut I don’t have a clock visible!) but I have more parts and will get back to carving next week, so will have a couple to sell soon. (It will have to be delivered, for now, as I have not the first idea how I’d ship it. I’m actually not even sure how I’m going to get it safely to shows!)

“As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame…” Though I admit this was inspired not by the poem directly but by the French art nouveau wallpaper sample at the bottom of the linked page. (And by “inspired by,” as you will see if you look closely, I mean “stolen from.”)

And this guy. I call him “Biggles.”

Grey catbird. The snow has the birds so hungry they don’t wait for me to go inside but let me stand on the porch with the telephoto lens.

I would dearly love to be able to blame a seven-point decline in children’s IQ scores on COVID lockdowns, but a lot of things happened in this country between 2012 and 2020. Ubiquitous smartphones. Social media. A decline in free play that long predates the pandemic. Changes in education itself, including the narrowing and politicizing of curricula and an ever increasing focus on test-taking. Demographic change, which it’s impolite to mention in this context, but if you’re going to talk about change from one generation to the next, you need to make sure you’re comparing children with their own parents, at least in the aggregate.

In any case, if you’re inclined to think that kids these days are a bunch of dumbasses, you now have data to back you up.