Forty-four days between New Year’s Day and Valentine’s Day would be very boring, when staying home is the pandemic norm. So for fun and festive reasons, I witnessed “livestream” town criers — donned in 1887 costumes — declare what famous North American groundhogs chuckled about the coming of Spring.
That was on February 2, when North Americans celebrated Groundhog Day, a tradition said to be of German origin and influence. It was also the exact date that tales of yore spoke of as the very moment that a groundhog would wake up after sleeping through the winter.
Wait! What? February 2 is not even mid-winter. How then can groundhogs have ended hibernation?
In medieval Europe, farmers believed that an early Spring was assured when hedgehogs went out of their burrows to catch insects. Europeans who settled in North America substituted the hedgehog to the groundhog.
Don’t contradict, please. That is just how the old story goes! To continue, if the groundhog sees its shadow on that day, there will be six more weeks of Winter. It not, Spring will come earlier.
Good old Almanac shows that Spring will begin on March 20, a Saturday, at exactly 5:37 a.m., EDT.
Be that as it may, Groundhog Day is another anti-virus fun celebration to herald the coming of spring.
*****
On video through social media platforms, Canada’s groundhog Spring forecasters called for an early spring.
Nova Scotia’s Shubenacadie Sam, the first of the North American rodents to make a Spring prediction, failed to see his shadow, when he went out of his den under a steady snowfall at the Shubenacadie Wildlife Park north of Halifax.
Fred La Marmotte had to whisper his prediction in his handler’s ear – an early Spring. Fred, accordingly, did not want to leave his warm cabin in Val d’Espoir on Quebec’s Gaspe peninsula.
Albino groundhog Wiarton Willie was missing in action. In Wiarton, Ontario, the community’s famous, was nowhere to be seen as officials Calling for an early spring, officials in Wiarton, Ontario threw a fur hat into the air, a traditional gesture that dated back to the community’s first Groundhog Day more than 60 years ago. Mayor Janice Jackson of the Town of South Bruce Peninsula delivered the forecast.
South of the border, Pennsylvania’s Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and people were told to brace for six more weeks of winter.
Perhaps, it is good to be guided by a line in English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley’s immortal Ode to the West Wind: “O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
*****
How I wish Canada would have some kind of tropical likeness during winter.
Every time I embrace the bright shining sun during winter, I also turn a blind eye to the thermometer, barometer and other atmospheric devices.
That is, without prejudice to dreaming of a cruise to the nearby Caribbean islands or to heading to the pristine falls and white sand beaches in the Philippines.
Alas! I can only dream. I am quite stuck in my heated room with my cane, my meds and my laptop.
*****
Did someone say that the government will be ready for my vaccination in September?
Oh Gee! Between now and September is the Holy Week!
Can someone please plan out and schedule another Groundhog Day?
*****
Mother Nature has this innate penchant for keeping the natural order of things within her realm.
The only thing she looks forward to is that her sons and daughters realize that silence and inaction will never work against the collective battle against gold, greed for power and guns.
When the forces of evil decimates the gifts and blessings Mother Nature lays for everyone’s use and enjoyment of a wonderful world, she also unleashes a few environmental tricks and anomalies just to remind all that the planet is the only home earthlings all hope to live and die peacefully and safely in.
Quick hit from Mang Asyong: “Respect nature. Never go against it.”
*****
Here are some tell-tale signs that a disaster may be coming. When a flock of birds fly fast away from a certain area, there may be a volcanic eruption. When ants break the orderly line and stray away in confusion, there may be an earthquake. When dogs bark and howl non-stop, something is not right. When my tummy rumbles, I am hungry.
Can groundhogs or any other animal ably predict when COVID-19 will end?
*****
It is but fitting and proper to greet our Chinese-Canadian friends Gong Xi Fa Cai or Gong Hey Fat Choy.
The Chinese Lunar New Year 2021 was on February 12, but celebrations go on and will end with the Lantern Festival on February 26.
Of course, many of these festivities that used to gather people in gleeful pomp and colourful pageantry will have to go “virtual,” because of health protocols and restrictions that will help control the spread of Coronavirus.
Like people born in the Year of the Ox, the Chinese are strong, reliable, fair and conscientious, inspiring confidence in others. They are also calm, patient, methodical and can be trusted.
By the way, February is Chinese Heritage Month, as it is African Heritage Month.
Again, a toast to our Chinese friends: Here’s wishing you a happy and prosperous Year of the Ox.
*****
Minister of Education Stephen Francis Lecce has announced that in-person learning will resume for schools in Toronto and Peel and York regions – three COVID-19 hotspots in Ontario — on February 16.
The Toronto District School Board said that remote and virtual learning will continue.
Out of the blue, Impong Isko asked: Will the Raptors continue to go for remote studies or will they be back to the classroom? Will their fans be stuck with virtual learning?
*****
Throwback: It was March 13, 1986. Peter Preufert patiently stood by the exit, waiting for me to emerge from the tube at Berlin’s Tegel International Airport. After the handshakes between two strangers meeting each other for the first time, we got into Peter’s car and motored to Kolpinghaus, a hostel in Kreuzberg district near the city proper.
Peter was the course director of the International Institute of Journalism (IIJ) in Berlin where I, having been chosen by Philippines News Agency (PNA) general manager Jose Pavia to represent PNA and the country, was to attend the three-month 49th IIJ Advanced Journalism Course.
Barely three weeks had passed since the so-called EDSA Revolution took place in the Philippines. Peter raised the topic to strike a conversation with me, who was busy ogling at the sights in my first foreign trip.
I had no first-person story to tell Peter. I was not in Manila during those trying times in Philippine history. Thus, I gathered my thoughts and told Peter what he must have already heard and read about what unfolded in EDSA. I am sure of that, as he just kept nodding while driving.
Then, he asked: Butch, will the EDSA Revolution bring change for the better in the Philippines?
I replied: I hope so. Only the future will tell.
*****
The EDSA Revolution in the Philippines happened from February 22 to 25, 1986 or 35 years ago, a decade and five years more than the infamous 20-year rule of strongman President Ferdinand Marcos that ended with his flight to Hawaii at the end of the EDSA uprising, also dubbed the “People Power Revolution.”
Since Marcos, six presidents have succeeded him: Corazon Aquino, Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Benigno Aquino III and incumbent Rodrigo Duterte.
For all its worth, I am rephrasing Peter’s loaded question: After all this time, has the EDSA Revolution fulfilled its promise to bring change for the better in the Philippines?
To this, I offer a reply from ‘Tupid Kubid: Are you kidding me?
*****
Come, let’s keep the winter blues away.
Books? Being safe and comfortable in stay-home mode kept me handily near a stack of antiquated Archie comic books inherited from the library of late colleague Tenny Soriano. Leafing through its pages did me good, as it did everyone who bought the first Archie Comics published in Winter 1942.
I tried to read a few novels that glared at me from a rarely touched bookshelf. Unfortunately, my eyes easily get strained. I also do not want to get the ire of my wife. When I read, I focus a lot and I can no longer hear her command me to do the dishes. New spectacles and hearing aids, what do you think?
Really, I love getting older. It makes me prove to myself that I will always be the leaf that would cling to the bough in all humor and positivity. (Aha! Taken from the Cascades’ The Last Leaf.)
Food? Who doesn’t like something to please the taste buds? If and when suggested by friends and medics who hate salt and sugar, a bit of this and that will not bend the diet. I don’t want to die yet, so I will eat.
A body builder (yung gumagawa ng Sarao jeep) once told me: “Pare, kung maglakad ka, para kang bariles na gumugulong.”
Sinagot ko na lang: “Ang pogi mo. Saan ka nagpa-vulcanize?”
Let me recall Impong Pedro’s attribution: “Eat a lot of leaves. Tingnan mo ang kambing.”
“Ah, ewan!”
*****
Let’s look at it this way: Spring can’t be too far behind. It will come in due time.
Be patient, Spring will soon be here and with it are Mother Nature’s gifts and blessings, promising the best material and spiritual growth by leaps and bounds.
Be warm. #####