Sometimes I am so glad I am a cat and will never be called to account for so-called human logic. For example, it’s become conventional wisdom, at least among all the self-appointed political pundits running around these days, that southerners are more conservative than northerners. I don’t know about you, but having spent my whole life in New England, I can say that Yankees are a pretty conservative lot.

If you want to see what poppycock this conventional wisdom is, just keep your eyes open next Tuesday. Watch what they are doing down in Louisiana on Fat Tuesday — or Mardi Gras as they call it down there. Frankly, they carry on in such a way that Janet Jackson might be mistaken for a temperance reformer on the streets of New Orleans.  And what are we doing here in Newtown next Tuesday? Well, we call it Shrove Tuesday up here and we are pulling out all the stops with a pancake supper at St John’s Church (5-7:30 pm, see you there!). Now, where do the conservatives live, again?

Newtown residents who watch WVIT, NBC’s Connecticut station, were able to pick up on where Matt Drazen was going to be when his segment aired this week. Mr Drazen has a weekly segment called “Where In Connecticut is Matt Drazen?” Each week he offers three clues about one Connecticut town, and then the following Monday he presents a segment answering his “Where in Connecticut…” question.

Last week’s clues were easy for our residents from the very start. The first clue was “This town is home to Edmond Town Hall. The problem is, there’s no such town as Edmond in the State of Connecticut.” The second clue was “James Brunot, the inventor of Scrabble, was born in this Connecticut town.” (Town Historian Dan Cruson should get in touch with Mr Drazen, as most Newtowners know Mr Brunot actually worked from a word game called Criss Cross Words, which had been invented by Alfred Butts, and Mr Brunot changed its name to Scrabble — poor Mr Cruson, it’s a never-ending battle for him on that Scrabble issue.)

The third clue was “For more than 100 years a giant flagpole, smack in the middle of Main Street, has been the primary landmark in this Connecticut town.”

When his segment aired on Monday, Mr Drazen showed our beautiful flagpole, with footage of members of Newtown Hook & Ladder raising and lowering the flag, and spoke with David Lydem, the town’s keeper of the flags. There was also a view of Edmond Town Hall, and a discussion of the steady rate of accidents that occur at the flagpole.

Mandy Monaco says Newtown Meals on Wheels needs a few more drivers to volunteer to deliver a few meals one day each month to shut-ins in the community. The activity involves picking up about a half dozen packaged meals at Ashlar and delivering them to the homes, a task that generally takes only about an hour and a half. Anyone who can help, or who would volunteer to be a substitute driver, is asked to call Colleen Honan, the Meals on Wheels driver coordinator, at 426-0714.

Tim Holian recently celebrated a milestone birthday. His sister, Sarah Conley, respectfully would not say which one, but gave me a few insights. For one, with each passing day Tim is looking more and more like his driver’s license picture. Also, several of his childhood toys can now be seen behind glass in a local museum. Most notably, however, is his easy chair — it has more options than his new car.

Bee Reporter Jan Howard was poking around her snowbound backyard on Wednesday and actually found a couple of daffodil spears above the frozen ground. “I wanted to dig under the ice where I know the snowdrops always are, but I was afraid of damaging them. I know they’re under there somewhere,” Jan said. Snowdrops are kind of inspirational, she added. They get all dumped on by ice and snow, but they bloom anyway.

Speaking of backyard chores, the end of February is a great time to clean out those bluebird nest boxes. Believe it or not, male bluebirds are already beginning to scout out possible nesting sites, and they’ll be ready to move in by the end of March. Gathering soft pine needles and making a preliminary nest, then showing it off to the little woman while impressing her with some fancy wing-waving and soft songs is what a male bluebird likes to do. It sort of gets his juices flowing. And a nice spring-cleaned nest box is needed to trigger the process.

All this talk about nesting reminds me that I am running late for my nap. But I’ll set my alarm in time to be back here next week, so be sure to…

Read me again.