Happy Groundhog Day 2024

 Today many of our favorite weather prognosticators promised an early spring.  They didn't see their shadows. Time will tell if they're right or wrong  Statistics show that Punxsutawney Phil is correct only 39 percent of the time.

Snow on Virginia Woolf's Birthday

 Our January snow has melted overnight. Yet its image comes clearly to mind as I remember that January 25th is Virginia Woolf's birthday. She wrote numerous times about snow and I think often about this passage from "The Years."   "The Years" (1937) was the last novel she published in her lifetime.               

"It was January. Snow was falling. Snow had fallen all day. The sky spread like a grey goose wing which feathers were falling all over England. The sky was nothing but a flurry of falling flakes. Lanes were levelled: hollows filled; the snow clogged the streams; obscured windows, and lay wedged against doors. There was a faint murmur in the air, a slight crepitation, as if the air itself was turning to snow; otherwise all was silent, save when a sheep coughed, snow flopped from a branch, or slipped in an avalanche down some roof in London. Now and again a shaft of light spread slowly across the sky as a car drove through the muffled roads. But as the night wore on, snow covered the wheel ruts; softened to nothingness the marks of the traffic, and coated monuments, palaces and statues with a thick vestment of snow."

                                                                       

Groundhog's Day 2023

Today's groundhog predictions from various locations seem to contradict each other. Some groundhogs saw their shadow and some did not. We're going with Punxsutawney Phil's prediction. He's right about 80% of the time and he saw his shadow today.

I'm not Phil!

That means we can expect six more weeks of winter.

Happy Groundhog's Day once again!

Groundhogs take good care of themselves and can handle all sorts of weather.  

 

Hail to the Whale on Poem in Your Pocket Day

April is National Poetry Month and Friday, April 29th, is Poem in Your Pocket Day. It's a day to carry a poem with you and share it with friends, family, and co-workers. This year I've chosen a poem by American poet Kimiko Hahn.

Groundhog Day 2022

 It's February 2nd and the lights and cameras await the emergence of our beloved groundhogs once again. While he (or she) is credited with the ability to forecast the weather for the next six weeks, it's an unfortunate fact that the groundhog is right about that only about half of the time. But there is one thing that our furry friend always gets right. The groundhog tells us that the hours of daylight are growing longer in the northern hemisphere. Earth is tilting on its axis and we are on our way to spring and summer.

An artist imagines the groundhog's winter home.

Here's groundhog on a summer day.

Twenty Years On

                                                                                    

The tangible horrors of that clear blue morning fell from the sky and remain with those who witnessed them unmediated by television and technology. We struggle to attain moral comprehension in our endless retellings of our experiences that day.

Groundhog Day 2021