A special 'nfp repost' (or deja vu: it's Groundhog's Day again )...

A few simple Groundhog questions:

Why does light bring continued darkness?
And darkness, supposed light?

On February 2nd we find the coincidence of many holidays: the Christian Candlemas (Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary) Day, the modern Groundhog's Day, the pagan celebrations of rebirth (Imbolc and Oimelc), and St Brigit's Day (Ireland). And they're all related! There's a re-aligned tie-in, too, of the Roman holiday of Lupercalia (modern St. Valentine's Day) since the Feast of Purification and Groundhog' Day were celebrated by the Eastern Orthodox calendar and some Ozark folks on Feb. 14th , and many pagans consider the current Candlemas Day (Feb. 2), the Feast of Lights, to be a pagan version of St. Valentine's Day anyways. So confusing! (For a stunning analysis of the all these intricate holiday tie-ins, check out Candlemas: The Light Returns)

But back to riddle at hand....

According to an old English song:

If Candlemas be fair and bright,
Come, Winter, have another flight;
If Candlemas brings clouds and rain,
Go Winter, and come not again.

According to an old Scotch couplet:

If Candlemas Day is bright and clear,
There'll be twa (two) winters in the year.

Why so? Because Candlemas day is a cross-quarter day in the pagan calendar, six weeks between the solstices and equinoxes. And according to pagan beliefs, the cross-quarter days can be used as 'inverse' weather predictors, whereas the normal quarter-days are used as 'direct' weather predictors.

So face it: Punxsutawney Phil is a pagan (naughty groundhog pagan!) utilizing the presence (or absence) of sunshine to create a detectable shadow (or not) from which he inversely makes a prediction! No sunshine, (no shadow), winter's at an end! But sunshine (and shadow), six weeks more does dismality send!

Is 7 miles a travail?   Hardly. Yet it’s more than a ‘mini mini marathon’.  Well, it was in the high 20s (F.) and almost festively sunny here yesterday.  Hell, that’s a tropical anomaly compared to nearly the whole month of January’s teenage and younger digits dreary deep freeze.  Consequently, I finally got to run again on dry pavement, without gloves, and felt the sun baking me with its miraculous incandescence.  I pretended, thus pampered, that I was running in a desert in the Southwest in the summer and feeling cool despite the torrid onslaught from a solar cindering furnace. ha  I think I even got a bit of a suntan!  

~atop~

~within~

IFILM features Real Player/Windows Media Player/Quicktime Player versions of all the ads from yesterday’s SuperBowl here.    Although small in format, I prefer to view them online rather than on tv.  I truly dislike the the tv programming concept of ads punctuating viewing (making the SuperBowl the ultimate 4-hour plus milk-job). My clear favorite is Pepsi: Purple Haze (Jimi) .  The only others I liked were Bud Light: Fergus, Bud Light! , Budweiser: Yelling Like a Ref, and Pepsi: Thirsty Grizzlies. 

The rest of the ads, to me, seemed lame and bland.  ha  An estimated $180 million was spent for adverstising time during the Bowl and the post-featured Survivor show.   hrmm...  I wonder how many Renoirs, Matisses, and Rodins I could purchase with a bundle of cash of that magnitude?!