Today is Groundhog Day! For those of us living in Pennsylvania it means it’s time when the State gets a little more air-time as the news crews descend upon the small town of Punxsutawney, PA where a poor old groundhog, designated as “Punxsutawney Phil” is dragged into the limelight from his home in the ludicrously named “Gobbler’s Knob” and, through some magical ceremony, prognosticates on whether Spring will be early or late.

The statistics of Phil’s accuracy are interesting and, with a 39% rate of being correct are significantly worse than chance. This being said, then I am assuming that we will have a long Winter this year since the unreliable rodent has opined that it will be an early Spring. Let’s see!

Of course the other famous Groundhog Day is the now classic 1993 film of the same name directed by Harry Ramis and starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell. In my opinion this is much more fun! The idea of reliving the same day repeatedly but being able to alter it though your own behaviour is quite fascinating from a philosophical point of view. As Murray experiences in the film, after the initial shock and boredom wears off, there are myriad ways one can explore one’s own psyche as well as that of others. Now that is quite a fascinating concept. Imagine the ability to simply erase the mistakes of a day until, in the end you create what you consider to be your perfect day. Could you do it, or would you go mad trying?

I, on the other hand am going to approach this from a more mundane and blatant angle by posting one image below a link to a few images of the town where I spent some of my childhood many years ago.

The number of days we kids spent roaming around and playing in this area, especially over the school holidays, meant that we were always searching for that “perfect day” and, although we wouldn’t have called it such, perhaps this was our own Groundhog day of sorts…  

~Richard