Going Viral

What a difference a few weeks can make. When I wrote my editorial for the Spring issue, the coronavirus was little more than a blip on the radar screen. Instead of writing about that, I wrote about how I was looking forward to the Ward World Championship, among other things. I ended by saying, “It’s going to be a busy spring!” By the time the issue came out, the world had changed.

Unlike team sports like baseball or basketball, wildfowl carving is something you can do by yourself in the comfort and safety of your own home. In that respect it’s a solitary endeavor and something we can pursue during this period of quarantine. However, two words that frequently come up in discussions of wildfowl carving are “community” and “camaraderie.” Those are things we miss when we can’t gather together in person.

That does not mean, though, that carvers aren’t finding ways to bring us together. People like Tom Matus and Floyd Scholz have been doing Facebook tutorials. Others have been posting photos of their carvings on various forms of social media. People are resilient and adaptive, as we have all seen over and over again this spring. I hope that many of you are taking advantage of this forced downtime to concentrate on some great carvings.

I also hope that when this issue comes out, this discussion about the coronavirus will be as outdated as my last editorial was, and that the world will have lurched back to some kind of normalcy. If that’s not the situation, I still have no doubt that we will get through this. The road may get rough, but it will smooth out eventually and we will all once again share the community and camaraderie we have enjoyed over the years at our favorite carving shows. I look forward to seeing you then. In the meantime, enjoy the look back at some recent work from the Ward over the years, starting on page 66.

For any of you working on interesting projects that you think would make good articles for Wildfowl Carving Magazine, drop me a line. We are always looking for new contributors. It helps if you know how to use a camera and have a reasonably good command of the English language. It helps even more if you are an excellent wildfowl carver.

In the meantime, stay healthy!