The calendar says spring arrives this week. Specifically, it debuts on March 19 at 11:06 p.m.

For us, it is the height of what is known as “Mud Season.” It is a term used to describe what is going on outside the back door that might be tracked inside the kitchen unless we are careful.

It is time to tackle the chores we have ignored since the Red Sox (78-84) officially finished last in the American League East, just 23 games behind the Baltimore Orioles.

I started last week by paying my federal, state and local taxes. It is a chore no one likes to do, but we all like to drive on the roads and enjoy the myriad benefits our collective governments provide. Some of those benefits, like the Southport bridge project ($20.9 million) and the Route 96 water pipe expansion ($4 million) would be real budget busters if our towns had to fund them.

Still on the horizon is a request that the town's property taxpayers fund a $30 million proposal to repair/fix or whatever needs done to the local schools.

But that is another topic for another day, as is the bill to repair winter storm damage to coastal roads and prepare for additional water damage as Mother Nature warms the ocean, which the experts at East Boothbay’s famed Bigelow Lab for Ocean Science tell us, will spawn bigger and tougher storms.

I guess climate change is not the commie/socialist myth ginned up to promote giant windmills, make us install Chinese-made solar panels on the roof, and trade in the family SUV for an electric car that won’t work very well in the winter, will run out of kilowatts before we reach Augusta, and put our local garage mechanics out of business.

I wonder, are the folks who tell us climate change is bunk, the same guys who told us cigarette smoking was good for our overall health and claimed Mr. COVID was just a bad case of the sniffles?

Meanwhile, the calendar tells me I am now as old as the two major party candidates for president of the USA.

When the new president is installed next winter, the two major candidates will be officially older than dirt, like me, Sir Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and, bless him, Willie Nelson, who, I am told, might be immortal.

For the record, on Inauguration Day 2025, Grandpa Joe Biden will be 82, while Grandpa Donnie Trump will be 78.

Both candidates are now in full campaign mode promising this and guaranteeing that crossing the nation kissing babies, hugging their mothers, and saluting veterans.

Much speculation has been made as to who Grandpa Donnie will pick as number two, not that it matters much. In the supposed words of Woodrow Wilson’s vice president, Thomas Riley Marshall: “Once there were two brothers. One ran away to sea, the other was elected vice president and neither of them was ever heard of again.”

You can assume Grandpa Donnie won’t pick Hoosier Mike Pence, the guy who served as his Veep and chief apologist during his last term.

Last week, with the echoes of the Jan. 6 mob chanting “Hang Mike Pence” ringing in his ears, the ex-Veep said he would not endorse his former boss’s 2024 re-election bid. Surprised?

With that public statement, Pence joined a gaggle of former White House top officials who declined to back the former POTUS.

Their refusal to endorse Grandpa Donnie has not hurt his standing in the public opinion polls, as he remains a bit ahead of Grandpa Joe in the latest iteration from the folks who claim to be able to divine the future.

Now for the real political news of the week. This report comes from Russia, where another oil company executive, who complained of headaches, was found dead in his private bathroom. Some reports claim he hanged himself. If so, he becomes the fourth company leader who recently left the Earth in mysterious ways. The board chairman fell out of a sixth-floor hospital window, becoming a victim of defenestration. Another exec died of a reported heart attack at age 43, although some accounts said he had been poisoned – with toad venom. Recently, Russian opposition leader Alexander Navalny died in a Siberian jail after going for a walk.

David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, reports Navalny survived an earlier assassination attempt after KGB agents broke into his hotel room and put a deadly poison in his skivvies. After he recovered from the poison, Navalny then called Russian dictator Vladimir Putin “Vladimir, the Poisoner of Underpants.”

So, when the guy at church or the tavern complains that American politics is a dirty, nasty sport, you can remind him that neither candidate has accused the other of poisoning his undies – yet.

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