Afraid of His Own Shadow

Today, as you know from the saturation news coverage that has knocked the Egyptian Revolution off the front pages, is Groundhog Day in the United States. For those visiting this blog from other countries, Groundhog Day is a very important American holiday in which a bunch of people in a small town in Pennsylvania wait for a groundhog to come out of his burrow to have a look around. If the groundhog sees his shadow it means there will be six more weeks of winter. If he doesn't see his shadow it means winter is almost over. Or the other way around. Honestly, crankyjewishguy (CJG) doesn't think a groundhog knows his ass from his elbow, let alone understands what his shadow is, but there you have it.

Crankyjewishguy (CJG) knows what people from other countries must be thinking: the United States is one of the most technologically advanced countries on Earth and spends billions of dollars every year studying, analyzing and predicting the weather and this is how they do it? The answer is yes, this is exactly how we do it.

In a normal year CJG would anxiously await the news from Gobbler's Knob, Pennsylvania the way he awaits his colonoscopy results. But this year he doesn't care. First, he's in Boca Raton where it's already summer (80 degrees as CJG writes), and second, no matter when spring comes to New England, it's going to be at least August before all the snow melts. And, frankly, there's another reason: CJG has lived more than five decades now and he doesn't believe in the groundhog anymore. CJG can't remember a year when the groundhog's prediction was right, at least in New England. If you live in New England and it's February 2nd, there's always at least six weeks of winter left regardless of whether the sun is out in Pennsylvania.

Now, as for Boca, CJG continued his streak of consecutive vacation days on which he has run into people he knows, or close to it. Readers will recall that when CJG was in Puerto Rico in December he could hardly turn around without bumping into people from home, including the kid who used to work at his local Starbucks, and yesterday, walking the beach, it happened again, but only because CJG made the mistake of wearing a t-shirt with the name of the town where he lives on it. CJG hadn't walked a hundred feet before an excited couple from CJG's home town came running up to see if maybe they knew one another. CJG didn't recall ever running into them at the supermarket or the library, or denting their fender at the bad intersection near the post office, so pleasantries were exchanged, mostly about how smug we felt walking the beach while our neighbors were being buried in another foot of snow. But CJG suspects that he could have been wandering the streets of Khartoum in the same t-shirt and the exact same thing would have happened because that's the kind of guy he is: friend to all the people.

No need for the groundhog here. The weather forecast is for several
thousand more years of sunshine with occasional hurricanes.