One thing that I think I've really changed while living with Miss Heather Higgins is my observace of all national holidays. Did anyone else know that today is Ground Hog's Day? Well it is. And I think Punxsutawney Phill will be seeing his shadow today. And here's a question for you. Does Phill predict winter for the whole US or is it a sort of regional thing? I would be leaning toward regional, but then what regions do you have? If there aren't any sort of lines drawn we could have a hog for every block in the nation. That doesn't seem to work. Then one hog could see his shadow and a hog a block over, who is a little braver, wont go hiding back in his hole. Does that mean that for the one block it's 6 more weeks of winter but the block over can say, "Bring on the Spring!"?
But it doesn't seem right that Phill would predict the nation either. How could cloud cover in New York possibly predict Utah's 6 week forcast? That is the big issue of the day. So anyway, HAPPY GROUND HOG'S DAY!
Quote from earlier this morning:
We were trying to find out the meaning of the town name Punxsutawney.
Me: Well it must be something brown because tawney means brownish.
Heather: Punxsu must mean Hog. Brown Hog.
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I think it has to be a national thing, because I'm pretty sure we don't even have groundhogs in this part of the country. Just prairie dogs, but I don't think they're trained in meteorology.
Punxsutawney actually means town of the sandflies. (ponksad-uteney) And groundhog's day is february 2 because it's exactly halfway between winter and spring. And it's a FABULOUS holiday. definitely cause for celebration
dang! anonymous got to it before me! I was just going to relate how the name Punxsutawney comes from the Indian name for the location "ponksad-uteney" which means "the town of the sandflies." But anonymous struck me down...
oh well.
I think our interpretation of the solstices is a little backwards. If the winter solstice is the shortest day of the year, doesn't that really mean that it's the middle of winter, and not the beginning of it? So I think that would make Groundhog Day the real first day of spring. Anyone buying that idea?
Well, I've been doing a little research on the subject today and I've found that there are more than one groundhog. Phil is the most popular, but he's usually wrong. He's predicted 6 more weeks 87% of the time and has been wrong about half the time. General Beauregard Lee, a groundhog based in Georgia, however has only been wrong once in his illustrious 15 year career. Thus proving the South will rise up once again.
Well, General Beauregard seems like he's the one to look for. I wonder if having a great name is part of being a Groundhog's Day groundhog. If so do we have a groundhog for our area of the US and what is it's name? Are there official girl groundhogs or is it simply a male position?
Thanks for the info about the day!
The first ever Groundhog's Day was Feb. 2, 1887, and it was celebrated in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. That means that Phil (or one of his predecessors) was the original Groundhog Weather Predicter.
We also found out that a groundhogs are the same animal as woodchucks, and that they are a type of marmot. We don't have any woodchucks in the western US, but since there are other types of marmots, you could try training one of them to be Phil's competitor for this region. Just bag one of them the next time you're in Yellowstone and a marmot tries to steal your sandwich.
Alas, we have no groundhog here in Happy Valley, but we do have the next best thing...
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,600109359,00.html
Hey Mags! According to Bryant we can run down to Gonzanga and bag us a marmot and train him for next year. I don't know though... they seemed like vicious little critters with absolutely no fear when they tried to steal our lunch at the Music festival.
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