Pennsyltucky Phil has done it again! It’s Groundhog Day and the little critter has been yanked from his home to make his yearly prediction: Six more weeks of winter! Ouch! Phooey! No Fair! That’s 42 more days, to those out there who are mathematically challenged, of winter! And since it’s February 2nd and the Spring Equinox occurs on March 20th which, for those of you who are scientifically challenged, is when the sun crosses the celestial equator and Spring begins, there are still 46 days until Spring!
So huzzah! Spring is coming early, by rodent standards that is, whether Phil saw his shadow or not…and if you are governmentally challenged then you have forgotten that daylight savings time begins on March 9th this year and we’ll all get an hour of extra daylight (not really, we’re just moving it from morning to evening) and that’s only 35 days away so thank you Uncle Sam, Spring will be arriving even earlier (as far as I’m concerned. How about you?) again this year!
But even so, tens of thousands of folks gather around each year to see what poor little old comatose Phil, ceremoniously dragged from his cozy hibernation lair, will have to say about it, even though Phil’s track record is less than reliable. He’s only gotten it right just 39 percent of the time since 1887, which of course makes him as accurate as a coin flip…but not really!
I guess we humans just love a good reason (or any) to party, and the good folks of Punxatawny say that this annual event (party) has helped raise millions of dollars for their economy. Meanwhile a few hundred miles east the NFL is celebrating the real end of winter with their annual Super Bowl (party), in which dozens of men collide into one another, (while tens of millions of others watch) rattling their brains, and lowering their own life expectancy in order to help raise billions of dollars for another great cause…the National Football League.
If only we humans could find a way (party) to make ourselves care about one another the way we care about superstitions and Super Bowls. There’s no telling how much money we could raise for a good cause (the human race?) then.
