It seems proper this year’s Palm Sunday morning began with hot coffee and a song.

The tunes had nothing to do with the traditional seasonal religious hymns and motets. Instead, Mother Nature provided a natural harbinger of spring.

It began in the front room as I gazed at Old Sol peeking over the pines when a quintet of hen turkeys ambled through the front yard, paused to kick the snow off the garden, pecked around a bit, and sauntered up the hill.

They were followed by a quartet of strutting myrmidons, three jacks, and a tom – a big, bad dude.

Mr. number one stopped and looked around to see if anyone was watching. Then he puffed out his breast, unfurled his tail feathers, stretched his neck, and gobbled his brains out.

I guess it was his way of singing to the girls. It was sort of a feathered version of the teenage ballad from the 1960s: “Hey, Hey, baby. I want to know, ho, ho, ho. If you’ll be my girl?”

Note to older readers who still have all their marbles. You may now sing along if you remember the tune. I’ll bet you do.

For the record, the hens ignored his pleas, at least for the moment, and kept wandering up the hill.

Despite the North wind’s bluster that blew down the garden trellis, and the last vestige of snow under the back deck, it must be springtime.

That means it is time for my favorite sporting event, March Madness.

That is a special time when little-known college basketball teams have the chance to lace up their sneakers and play against the majors. No matter how the sports pundits rank them, a number-one ranking doesn’t mean squat. If you don’t think so, just ask my old pals who bleed black and gold for Purdue. That is why they play the game.

As we watched our brackets busted by scrappy teams like Florida Atlantic, this year's games took a back seat to the women, thanks to a super performance by Caitlin Clark, Iowa’s star player.

Did you notice how the commentators for the women's games stifled a giggle as they mentioned how the Iowa-Louisville game (where Ms. Clark threw down 41 points) drew a bigger TV audience than any NBA game of the season?

The next game, Clark pitched in another 41 as her team hammered South Carolina, last year’s champ that had not lost a game in a year.

Hardcore basketball fans who know the game is a lot more than scoring buckets marveled at Clark’s passing/assist skills that seemed to mirror the game of the NBA’s top guard, Stephen Curry.

In the final, despite a 30-point performance from Clark, Iowa could not overcome a multi-talented LSU team and lost 102-85.

As an aside, the success of the women's game was a tribute to the late Indiana Senator Birch Bayh. He earned the ire of the nation’s college football coaches when he pushed through Title 9, a law mandating women’s sports programs be on an equal footing with men’s.

Just for the record, Title 9 paved the way for one of this year's top women’s college stars, Indiana University forward Mackenzie Holmes. She once led Maine’s Gorham High School to state championships. It was a treat to watch the college games. They gave us a needed break from the food fight that passes for national political news.

Sorry readers on both sides, don’t expect me to start ranting about the latest events. I just don’t care about the personal peccadilloes of the 45th president, nor that of the 42nd. That is none of my business. I believe punishment for those incidents is best left to the former POTUS persons and their ex-FLOTUS mates. I suspect their homefront penalties were more severe than those they received on the public stage.

Did you note that over the weekend a couple of dozen clowns clad in black who claimed to be pseudo-Nazis marched down Portland’s downtown sidewalks? As they strutted and waved for the obliging TV cameras, did you notice they were all wearing masks? We can assume they were not wearing masks to protect themselves from the evils of Mr. COVID. Did they want to conceal their identities from their friends, neighbors, employers, and anyone who might take offense at their conduct? Maybe they were too ashamed to let their mothers see what they were doing, as she still remembers when her grandfather went overseas to fight the Nazis. Do you suppose these are the same guys who like to lurk in the darkness as they spread their venom with spray paint cans rather than stand up in public where someone might object?

And I wonder why they chose black outfits. Do you think their local Walmart had sold out of white sheets?