It’s March! March Madness has arrived when a large portion of otherwise normal people in offices, schools, and mancaves throughout the country fill out their brackets trying to predict which college basketball team will win the annual NCAA basketball tournament and be crowned the best team in the nation. Many of them are obsessed fans who bet heavily on the outcome of the games that span three weekends. That’s why it is called March Madness. Most of these people, including myself, don’t know the difference between the University of South Carolina and the University of Antarctica.

            The tournament began in 1939 and now consists of 68 teams that play in eight rounds starting with the First Four and leading to the Sweet Sixteen, the Elite Eight and the Final Four. (My, they do like alliteration, don’t they?) The championship game is called…er, The Championship. My choice for a tournament winner is Gonzaga University because I like the name. Just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? Gon-Za-Ga. The”Zags” have been in the tournament since 1999. They have reached Sweet 16 twice, Elite 8 six times and Final Four twice, losing every time. Now that’s Madness”!

            The schools receive a large trophy, bragging rights, and a lot of money. The players who do the actual work do not get paid but can and do make millions by selling the rights to their names and images in commercial deals. The whole thing has become a bit of a circus. So, buckle up and enjoy the circus and the madness.

            Speaking of circuses and madness, the current tenant in America’s most famous public housing has again made writing satire easy. (You didn’t expect me to not comment on the circus, did you? Really?) Taking a break away from ballroom and arch construction, the Leader of the Free World in an address at a GOP retreat on Florida referring to the current Middle East excursion, uttered the now immortal words that there are “people who died are walking around (over there) without legs, without arms.” That pearl of wisdom comes on the heels of another immortal phrase “…they are eating the cats, eating the dogs…” spoken at a presidential debate in September 2024.

            Trying to be positive, I imagine our chief executive took a break from world leadership to enjoy a couple of films in the White House movie theater. Rumor has it that the classic the “Sixth Sence” was on the marquee. The 1999 film starred Bruce Willis, (A great actor who sadly, now suffers from dementia.) He played a psychologist treating a young boy who sees dead people walking.

            On the second bill might have been “The Madness of King George” a comedy about the downfall of Britain’s King George III. He was called “The Mad King’ who is said to have “lost America” in the American Revolution. Despite receiving four “Thumbs Up” from the late film critic Roger Ebert it did not do well at the box office, bringing in about half what it cost to make.

            Our First Lady’s husband is not the only public official who sees things that are not there and can’t be.  According to a CBS TV affiliate in Lake North Beach, Florida, a woman was stopped by a local police officer and given a ticket for holding a cell phone in her right hand. Despite her protests the officer insisted and wrote on the citation he ‘saw the phone in her right hand.”  The thing is…the woman has no right hand! She intends to appeal and her hearing is on April1, which by the way, is April Fool’s Day.

            Now that’s Madness!

            Mattapoisett resident Dick Morgado is an artist and happily retired writer. His newspaper columns appeared for many years in daily newspapers around Boston.

By Dick Morgado

            “Spring is icumen.” The change of the seasons is perceptible now — can you see it? More importantly, can you feel it? With the rebirth going on all around us, it’s natural to experience a sense of rejuvenation and hopefulness.

            While the weather report isn’t exactly blissful, I’d rather the rain than snow and the climbing temperatures are encouraging. Early March has been living up to its reputation “in like a lion” but we can expect that to tame so that it lives up to the other part of the proverb “out like a lamb.”

            Even the common adolescent takes note as my students brighten when the sun shines and then deflate when the temperatures dip. Agreed, everything is more tolerable with the sun. And subtle changes are happening: more birdsong, catkins on the hazelnut tree, and a softer feeling in the air that says spring is almost here.

            These awakenings travel to our nerve centers and elicit responses. For the gardener, it’s time to begin another cycle of planting as nature reinvents itself again. Nature’s clock has been fast forwarded, urging us to make contact with the ground and nurture what is growing.

            This first session in the garden may not appear romantic – a hunched figure in coveralls overseeing a brown canvas with a few green splotches doing mundane tasks. But for the gardener who has been inside for too long, it is a thrilling time of abandon. The mind cranks ahead, not seeing a drab patch of dirt with tattered remains of last year’s plants, but rather the garden that will be. You’re getting acquainted all over again with a place that holds some of your innermost dreams. You try to comprehend how this or that grew so large, recalling how tiny it was when you planted it several years ago. Even the obnoxious weeds like onion grass bring a momentary smile. It is nearly spring and you are in step.

            And, as every year when you first venture out, there are memory lapses. It’s unlikely that every plant you put in the ground is memorized, so there will be markers or the plants themselves as reminders. The loop along the front border where I introduced new perennials last year I can only half recall. I will just have to wait to see what comes up where.

            Then there is another kind of memory game or gap, known as “name that plant.” It is a plant whose name you know as well as the names of your children. But for a second or two it’s gone. You stare at the leaves and all you can think of is romaine lettuce. Let’s see, verbascum? No, too early. Foxglove? Still early. Then it rises up and trippingly comes off the tongue: primula! Oh yes, with unique green flowers! It’s like seeing someone familiar in an unexpected setting. A snag in the old mental rolodex. Spring is also for oiling the mind.

            I always take pleasure in the simple things – rediscovering lost plants or uncovering their markers, finding plants that have survived… I wonder if the nigella will come back? …and the occasional item that has nothing to do with gardening (namely plastic dinosaurs and long-lost plastic Easter eggs). These revive memories of the summer long past and reinforce the idea that gardening is ongoing and not fixed.

            Enjoy springing forward!

            “There is a blessing in the air,

            Which seems a sense of joy to yield

            To the bare trees, and mountains bare,

            And grass in the green field.”

-William Wordsworth, “The First Mild Day of March”

The Seaside Gardener

By Laura McLean