So… tomorrow is Groundhog Day, eh?

So what happens if the dude decides not to show up? What are the implications if Ole Punxsatawney Phil rightly figures it’s way too cold to come poking up from the deep warm recesses of his winter rest? What if every Marmota marmax in the whole dang country boycotts? What if they’re snow-blind and even though the shadows are there, they just can’t see them? What if they’re so struck by the beauty around them they simply forget to look down?

No matter what happens in and among the population of our overgrown prognosticating ground squirrels, I reckon we’ll probably manage to deal with ever how many weeks of winter remain. If Felipe and his tunneling kindred are no more accurate than the various political polls that told us Donald Trump didn’t have a snowball’s chance of becoming president, then I’m guessing we’ll just have to learn to live with yet another errant prediction.

Regardless of the predictions and prognostications, we’ll still have to pay our heating bills, deal with our seasonal affective disorders and pay our taxes. Some folks swear at the weather, the groundhog, the bills and the president. Others say, “I hear there’s six inches of fresh powder up in the mountains. Kids, layer up and grab your snowboards!” And, I think there are still some folks who take a look outside and say, “What a perfect day for a cup of hot chocolate and reading a book.”

Predictions and prophecies, prognostications and pontifications, and all such run the gamut all the way from “the sky really is falling” to “Nirvana is just around the corner.” Other than occasionally buying an extra loaf of bread and voting for people who actually seem capable of rational thought and reasonable compromise, I really don’t bother with much in response to all the noise and chatter.

I try to be like the old black preacher I heard in South Fulton, Tennessee about forty years ago explaining why he and his brethren didn’t get caught up in the contrived controversies about millennialism: “Some folks say there’s going to be ‘Thousand-Year Reign’ and others say it’s just figurative. Some say there’s going to be a rapture first and then judgment. We don’t care one way or another. We know that either way we’re gonna be with Jesus and that’s all that matters to us.”

Kind of funny how many things don’t perturb folks who have their priorities properly sorted out.

H. Arnett
2/1/19