We endured nearly three feet of snow a couple of weeks ago in our Connecticut town. In other parts of the state and outside Boston, it was even worse. After a week of mostly above-freezing daytime temperatures, a consistent cold blast has returned and the melt has stopped, except for those areas exposed to long periods of sunshine. One more decent size snowfall and an April 1 start to the golf season in New England will be in jeopardy.

        This is a depressing time of year for golfers in the northeast. I am luckier than most as I am scheduled to play a few excellent golf courses with the SC Golf Rating Panel in the Beaufort, SC, area late in March. (Look for reports in this space next month.) I can’t wait. (No, I mean that, I really can’t wait because, after a two-month layoff, I need a practice round before playing serious golf, and if the Gulfstream brings enough 40-degree days to the Connecticut coast, then I might get in some play in early March.)

FlaginSnow

This?

        I have something to look forward to, but those northerners who don’t visit and produce golf course reviews for a living can only dream about warm weather golf. So here’s a modest proposition, especially for those considering buying either a vacation home or a retirement home on a golf course in the warm South. Fill out my free Questionnaire about your preferences for a golf home, and I will respond within a couple of days with a list of golf communities that best match your criteria. And if any of those golf communities strike your fancy, I’ll contact them to see if we can arrange a discounted “discovery package” that, of course, includes golf.

        This is the time of year up North when Florida looks especially appealing. We checked this coming weekend’s weather in Naples and Sarasota, for example, and found expected temperatures in the low 80s with little chance of rain. (We checked airfares from major northern airports to Sarasota, Ft. Myers, Jacksonville and West Palm Beach for this coming weekend and found many fares under $300 round trip.)  Across the Carolinas, it will be wet this weekend, but still warm enough for inveterate golfers to give it a go.  But the long-range outlook for Charleston, Savannah, Myrtle Beach and Wilmington is warm, with a chance of 36-holes a day.

AudubonCC7

Or this?  (Audubon Country Club, Naples, FL)

        My wife and I spent Valentines Day afternoon at the New Britain Museum of Art, a small gem of culture about 10 minutes from Hartford, CT. We were there to take in the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibit, which was fascinating, although I could have done with more large colorful posters and fewer small black and white sketches. At the end of the visit, I followed Mrs. on the obligatory brief visit to the museum’s gift shop where, of all places, I was reminded that golf, no matter the rumors of its imminent demise, remains a popular symbol of a content retirement.

        Buyers for museum gift shops are suckers for any products that have an art theme. And they are smart, from a merchandising standpoint, to always throw a few cheap products in amidst the overpriced art catalogs and reproduction objets d’art. (Better to have the customers walk away with something, even if itRetireMints adds only a few pennies to the museum coffers.) A package of breath mints, part of a series of tins produced by a group called The Unemployed Philosophers Guild, caught my eye –- as satirical representations of famous works of art tend to do. (Mona Lisa winking is one of my favorites.) This tiny tin of “RetireMints” (clever) showed Grant Wood’s famous painting American Gothic –- you know, the stoic looking farmer couple facing ahead, a pitchfork in his hand. Except in the Philosophers Guild’s three-inch square version, Mr. Farmer is holding a metal golf driver.

        A golf club was really the only harmonious choice for the revisionists at the Unemployed Philosophers Guild. Consider other aspects of an active retirement -- boating, walking the treadmill in a fitness center, doing laps in a pool –- and how difficult they would be to represent in such a compact painting. Sure, Mr. Farmer could have held a tennis racket upright in the painting but, really, does anyone over the age of 60 play tennis anymore?

        Golf is still the de facto symbol of an active retirement, and as long as it remains so, rumors of its death will remain a FigMint.

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        The Philosophers Guild offers a wide array of mints that take advantage of the flexibility of the suffix “-ment.” Our favorites, besides the RetireMints, are the “EmpowerMints,” “EnlightenMints,” and “Anti-EstablishMints.” For the entire list of mints, check out http://www.philosophersguild.com/mints/  And if you are looking to mint a new life in a golf community, please contact us and we will be happy to assist you.  Finding the right golf home is as much art as it is science.