Tag Groundhog

Beyond a shadow of a doubt

Michael 8 Comments

He’s on his way. Just four more days until Groundhog Day 2023! This entire blog could be dedicated to Groundhog Day and the other 51 weeks be just filler material. Actually, it could be dedicated to the Groundhog, Phil, the one, the only, Punxsutawney Phil.

Not a year has gone by that I hadn’t written something of Phil and/or his exploits. At least I don’t think so. You can search “Groundhog Day” if you’re really that interested.  And if you haven’t read the 10 or 12 posts that will pop up there, you should. There’s a wealth of information there. Why, two years ago I even wrote a Groundhog Day carol.

Groundhog Day lovers aren’t known for assiduously adhering to the facts when it comes to our favorite rodent. We are known for our unwavering support for the little furry guy. Phil gets all kinds of non-respect. Meteorologists (the science guys and the TV people) don’t like him (just because he’s more accurate than the science guys and more popular than the TV people). People who don’t like winter (because he predicts a longer winter way more often than an early spring (137-20)), don’t like him. People who want an early spring don’t like him (see previous sentence). Southerners don’t like him (apparently some Georgian poser by the unlikely name of Beauregard gets the confederate vote). But that’s okay because the 42 quadrillion of us who do like him love him, and we love him a lot. How could anyone not love Punxsutawney Phil?  A furry woodland creature not known for building dams, outsmarting waskly hunters, or becoming Daniel Boone’s hat, gets more than his 15 minutes of anthropomorphic fame each February 2 with the power to captivate us mere mortals more than any other animal alive.

So what will this year bring? I’ve said it before, I’m not the prodigious prognosticator that Phil is, but … Considering our hollow trees are a mere 90 miles apart, we are working with the same weather, and this year’s weather in Western Pennsylvania has been anything but predictable. The average temperature has been higher than normal and the average precipitation has been lower. But on the day when it’s been cold, it’s been COLD and on the days it’s been wet and snowy, it’s been WE – well, you get the idea. I say we throw all that together with the fact the Lunar New Year heralding the start of the Spring Festival was so early this year, and Phil can look around all he wants, but he won’t see his shadow and we will thus have an early spring. Yay! Or not.

Is the best way to help, support, and encourage yourself to help, support, and encourage others? We answered that question last week on Uplift! on ROAMcare.org. Read all we had to say.

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Groundhog Day Eve Eve Eve… and it better not be the last one!

Michael 2 Comments
I love Groundhog Day. There. I said it. Again. And will again. And again. It’s a love that never abates. How could anyone not live Groundhog Day?  A furry woodland creature not known for building dams, outsmarting waskly hunters, or becoming Daniel Boone’s hat, gets more than his 15 minutes of anthropomorphic fame each February 2 and the ensuing six weeks.
 
The great and wonderful groundhog with special and semi-secret skills has the power to capture man’s interest and captivate the entire human race or at least those in the know like no other furry friend since the mink in the 1950s. Without the groundhog we would never know if we should pack away our parkas or beef up our boggins. Yes, our resident rodent is truly righteous.
 
But now the prognosticator of prognosticators, the seer of seers, the meteorological marmot is under attack, personal attack, attack by name, as in we want you Punxsutawney Phil, to be no more, to cease and desist the sharing that special knowledge of seasonal weather patterns with the ever waiting world, and retire to a life of obscurity and be replaced by a (my hands are shaking as I type this), by a (deep breath here), by a, a, a robot. A robot! Hmmph!
 
That animal support group that assumes only its ways are the ethical ways to treat animals yet cannot count even one single groundhog, nor any other animal for that matter among their leadership, claim to know what is best for that most famous furball and insist it is “long overdue for Phil to be retired.” Notice “to be retired” not even just ‘retire’ like it would be his choice, but “to be retired,” like some old horse put out to pasture. All true Phil fanatics know this is no ordinary groundhog living his peaceful and quite cushy existence at Gobblers Knob. He has been forecasting for 134 years. That one single, extraordinary example of Marmota monax has been the center of the winter weather world for 134 years. That’s one hundred, thirty seven years! To suggest he is “to be retired” is to encourage and support age discrimination, hardly an ethical stance for any mammal.
 
And what would those manic meddlers suggest we do every Second of February for our prophetic forecast fix? Artificial Intelligence.  Hmmph – again! As stated by a representative of that nebby group, an AI module attach to an animatronic groundhog could “actually predict the weather.” I can see it now, the president of the Inner Circle knocks on former Phil’s front door and says, “Alexa, tell me the weather for the next 6 weeks.” Double Hmmph!!!
 
I say no! This is not the time for Punxsutawney Phil to be retired. Not this year, not any year. We’ve seen what so-called progress does. Bulging landfills, holes in the ozone, pet rocks! When will our march to oblivion stop? Now I say, now! This is the time to embrace Phil (not too tight – he is 134 years old after all) and demand he never retire and will always guide us to our destinies. Or at least to the next six week. 
 

Phil

The robots are not coming! Long live Phil!

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Prepping for Punxsutawney

Michael 1 Comment

Last week I was watching a hockey game and heard mention that somebody’s back-up goal keeper is from North Pole, Alaska.  What struck me was the North Pole part. Obviously because not even a week later do I remember the who or even the team. That North Pole part struck me because I know that Alaska doesn’t make it to the North Pole. So, I just had to look it up, because, after all, – all together now – I have that kind of time. Seems that North Pole isn’t along Alaska’s northern shore, not in the northern counties, not even in the northern half of the state. It’s a suburb of Fairbanks. Now how about that. That’s almost akin to false advertising naming North Pole North Pole when it’s around 1,700 miles south of the North Pole.

I must be going somewhere with this, you muse. And you muse correctly. It got me thinking about some of the names we call our hamlets. And the hamlet I thought of first, because it will be a Mecca for about 100,000 more people than just me this Thursday, is Punxsutawney. Even the most irregular of regular readers know I have a special fondness for Groundhog Day and the festivities that will take place at that Western Pennsylvania village. Punxsutawney Phil is so dear to me that his was the first picture to accompany a post on this blog.  (See “Six Weeks,” Feb. 2, 2012.) (If you want, it doesn’t have anything to do with this post but it still makes interesting reading.) (Well, I think it’s interesting but then I think the other 9 or 10 posts that mention Groundhog Day are interesting also.) (Actually I think all of the posts are more than fairly interesting or I wouldn’t have posted them now would have I?) (Or darn, I did it again. Where was I?)

20170129_175057All that thinking about North Pole, Alaska and how names are given to places got me thinking about just what “Punxsutawney” means. So I looked that up too. It means “land of the sandflies.” Punxsutawney was a 1700 era settlement of the Delaware nation and presumably named by them. I’m not really in a place to question their observations and aptitude for naming places, but I don’t understand how a clearing on the edge of the Allegheny Forrest, in the mountains, over 300 miles from any ocean, over 900 miles to any water hot enough to have a sand beach presumably with flies, could be considered the “land of the sandflies.”  The “land of” would indicate that whatever comes after “of” is so indigenous to that area that one cannot think of the “land” without automatically thinking of the “of.” I don’t know about you but Punxsutawney Sandflies doesn’t fall from my lips instinctively.  Not even the local high school picked the sandfly as its mascot even considering the origin of its town’s moniker. (In fact, they are the Punxsutawney Chucks, as in woodchucks, as in groundhog.)

And there we are, back to the groundhog and Punxsutawney Phil and Groundhog Day. And I am positively thrilled that inhabitants of the “land of the sandflies” got over that as quickly as they did. In time somebody noted that February 2 was midway between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox and was ideal for predicting the severity of the balance of the season so the spring plantings could be planned. And no animal was better suited to make that prediction than the humble groundhog.

And now I know how Punxsutawney got its name. And so do you. Aren’t you glad you read all the way through? Yes you are.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?