Groundhog Day
Posted by Steve Rauch at 1:29 PM
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There is likely more folklore surrounding the weather than any other aspect of daily life. The width of the center band on the wooly caterpillar predicts the severity of the coming winter. A green Christmas means a white Easter. The weather of each of twelve days of Christmas predicts the weather for the corresponding month in the coming year. Surely you have your own favorites.
My grandfather was a dairy farmer, completely dependent on the weather for his livelihood. He listened to the National Weather Service forecast every day; but he also consulted the Old Farmer's Almanac.
As a Pennsylvanian, the dearest folklore has to be Punxsatawney Phil, the groundhog whose interest in his shadow attracts media coverage from around the world. If the day is sunny, Phil sees his shadow indicating six more weeks of winter. If cloudy, spring is on its way.
According to the Official Website of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, Phil will be texting his forecast this year.
The best thing going for Phil is that by the time spring arrives, we have long forgotten if he saw his shadow or not.
Erica Eng wrote on 02/08/10 12:12 PM
Groundhog Day for me will forever be associated with the Bill Murray/Andie McDowell movie of the same name. The movie is funny, of course, but the message that we all too often wake up to do the same thing over and over again is a powerful one. It could be depressing -- to be condemned to live the same problems, even the same joys, time and again, for eternity, with no change, is a sentence that most of us would not want to serve. The hopeful part is that Bill realized that if he changed each day a bit -- learned piano, practiced a crucial conversation -- he could get it right. He knew that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. He chose to take a new action today for a diferent tomorrow. Now that's a take home message for everyone!