Mad As A March Hare...

Original illustration by John Tenniel, 1865

March is a good month, though there is a tendency to grow lax at the idea of Spring, officially beginning on March 20th...because we forget the cruelty of April is lurking just around the corner.

In this lovely interlude, the counterfeit Time Lords will once again enforce Daylight Savings, next weekend actually. The back and forward changes are so close together now, that really, why do we bother? This is such an archaic thing...right up there with still using Roman numerals, which I totally do not understand. At all.

We will celebrate St Patrick's Day, though our reverence will come, not with religious fervor, but with copious amounts of beer (no accident this oasis of frivolity is in the middle of Lent). Rivers will turn green, and everyone will suddenly become Irish.

[Here's a bit of folklore: St Patrick was actually born in Wales, but was captured by pirates and taken to Ireland as a slave. He eventually escaped but later returned as a missionary...and became a legend.]

Next comes the Spring Equinox, when daylight at last equals the hours of darkness. The early flowers--bluebells and lily-of-the-valley and snowdrops and grape hyacinth and daffodils--begin to brighten the landscape. There's warmth in the sun and a tender hope in the air.

We should revel in the brief joy of March. It's a month of celebration and promise, a month when we realize, deep in our primordial memory, that we've survived another Winter, that better days are coming.  We should laugh and be silly and be as mad as the Hare, or the Hatter...

Because April is coming.