Punxsutawney Phil

So my friend Val is an avid fan of nature, especially bugs, turtles, and fluffy animals.  I usually explain to people about where I'm from using Punxsutawney as a landmark, and when Val heard this, she began plotting to convince me to go to Groundhog Day with her.

I'm not a big fan of Punxy, because all of the roads to get there will make you carsick at the end. And if you don't actually throw up, you'll be all pasty and sweaty and have to lie down and think stationary thoughts for a good fifteen minutes before you can function even at a low level.

In the end, Val's convincing, and the possibility of getting some of the World's Best Pizza, meant that we rented a car and headed off for the Wilds of Pennsylvania.  Here she is, at Sheetz (amazing, and sadly unavailable in Philadelphia), with an MTO and a Groundhog Day card my Mum sent.

We arrived at the family homestead before midnight.  I slept wonderfully, despite Mum's weirdly shaped pillow (or perhaps because of).  But Val, who stayed in my old room, was freaked out by the dark and quiet of the county, had an apparently uneasy night.  City folk.

Up and about around 5:00, tea and groundhog cookies consumed shortly afterwards, we bundled up and headed to Punxy.

I was (and am) super proud of myself for getting to Punxy without directions, not having been for probably over ten years!  That's what happens when your Mum drags you and the Lil'Bro there every week of every summer for years and years.  Apart from never getting over the carsickness, the route does get impressed upon you.

We parked downtown next to the McDonalds and hopped a school bus shuttle up the Gobbler's Knob.

Approaching Gobbler's Knob, around 7:00 in the morning.

Bonfire, on the outskirts of the crowd.

No idea where this dude came from.

Apparently security was extra-tight this year, because PA Governor Tom Corbet (Space Cadet) was coming to Punxy for the event.  I did see a man dressed inappropriately in a gray suit, but it wasn't him.

All of my photos of the actual extraction are really blurry because it was dark and I refuse to use a flash.  And there was some lady directly in my way to was taking picture with what I swear was an entire iPad.

The proclamation:

Hear Ye Hear Ye Hear Ye!

On Gobbler's Knob on this magnificent Groundhog Day, February 2nd, 2012, Punxsutawney Phil, the Seer of Seers, Prognosticator of all Prognosticators, was summoned from his burrow in the old oak stump by the tap of President Bill Deeley.

At 7:25 a.m. he greeted his handlers, John Griffiths and Ron Ploucha. After casting an appreciative glance toward thousands of his faithful followers, Phil proclaimed:

As I look at the crowd on Gobbler's Knob,
Many shadows do I see
So six more weeks of winter it must be!

It was actually really nice, for the crack of dawn in February in Western PA.  Not freezing, not snowing, and minimal drunk college kids in for the day.

After the forecast, and after the news teams get photos of Phil and the Inner Circle, Phil gets put in a large plastic cylinder and people process up onto the stage to get their photos taken with him.

This Phil seems to be a relatively newer reincarnation.  He's little and busy, he was jumping up in the Groundhog Cylinder and scrabbling around in the wood shavings.  My favorite part of this photo is the dude with the giant-eyed groundhog hat in the background.

The sign to Gobbler's Knob, after the sun had risen.

Only a fraction of the buses used to shuttle people.  This is why the Punxy school district has the day off: the kids couldn't be shipped to school in the morning.

Downtown Punxy.  Also - I was disparing of seeing anyone I knew in Punxy, because people who are local are kind of 'whatever' about it.  However!  I did run into the Foulkrods (being parents of Amberly and Mr. F. being my old French/English teacher).  So I was super-excited about that.

Pancake breakfast at the Punxy Salvation Army, souvenirs purchased, we headed to the little square by the library.  

There is a groundhog habitat in the library, in case you didn't already know where Phil lives during the off-season.  (It's pictured in the back, behind Val).

And Barney and Philomena were out and busy, walking around and eating vegetables!  They both looked so nice and fluffy.

Val was like, "Barney and Philomena?"  And I was all, "Philomena is Phil's wife, and Barney is Phil's cousin.  It's all in the book.  I grew up around here, trust me."

This more sinister Groundhog was lurking outside the library. 

This was one of the most interesting things going on in the park: the welding classes from Jeff Tech were having a metal sculpture competition!  (I know these things because I talked to an adjunct faculty member about it, who was supervising.)  It was really cool.  The students are split into two teams, they pick a team leader, and start designing their sculpture in the fall.  After the design is finalized and various schematics made, they have to present everything to the school board.  Supposing the board approves the plan, they start gathering materials and assembling smaller components.  On February 2nd, the get to Punxy and start building!

The sculptures are judged by the Inner Circle, and (the winner or both, this was unclear) are later placed in a growing sculpture garden up at Gobbler's Knob!

Three kettle corn trucks in the park, with nary a funnel cake truck in sight.  I opted for the haluski.  My familys' ethnic background does not include haluski, so it's always a treat to eat some (and it's always better from a truck)!

Chainsaw Sculpture - This is Man's Art.  And Western Pennsylvania is know for its chainsaw sculptors.  All groundhogs, in the spirit of the day.

This is how you color the groundhogs, by toasting their outsides with a giant torch.  And no, it's not actually so cold that you can see the guy's breath.  He's smoking while running the giant torch.

Ice sculpting groundhogs too.

Val was all about this burn-down building, because prior to our visit, she was on some website - the Chamber of Commerce or the Punxy Spirit - and was amazing that an article said, "The Punxy Hotel burned down to the ground!"  Apparently she is unused to such dramatic news.  It was an accurate assessment though.  

I told Mum about it over the phone and she solemnly replied, "Punxy has a history of arson.  Be careful, there are a bunch of weirdos in that town."

Miss Havisham lives here.  Next to the bowling alley.

Winter Winterthur

I went to Winterthur for a day in mid/early January, as a guest lecturer for the WUDPAC program.  It's always nice to visit the grounds, and I had a sunny snow-free day to do so.

Part of the house/mansion.

Even toddler-cupids get cold too.

This winter has been so lame.  Maybe it's that year in Canada talking, but if it's not going to snow, I don't even want to bother with winter.  January 12, and the snowdrop were already up.

"Heathcliff!!!"

Jackson, Mississippi

This was the only non-work-related photo I took in Jackson, Mississippi.  From within the rental car, at a highway intersection south of Jackson.  Hubcap heaven.

Also, the Atlanta airport is one of the Circles of Hell detailed by Dante in the Divine Comedy.

Rocket City!

Work has been busy lately, with much traveling.  Cordelia Cat isn't too happy about it either, which means petulant little meows for me all night long.  At the beginning of the month I was in Maryland for multiple days.  Last week I was in Huntsville, Alabama.

During my layover, in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Unsurprisingly, there are no direct flights from Philadelphia to Huntsville.

View from my hotel window.  The large building to the right is yet another hotel.  The shorter building on the left is a Hooters.

So I arrived in Huntsville, got the rental car, made it to the hotel without problem, and went up to my room.  It was kind of weird, really wide, and everything was low.  Whatever, I'll just clean up and head out into Huntsville.  I open the bathroom door - surprise!  It is now clear that the hotel gave me a handicapped room.  (Have you ever seen a handicap hotel bathroom?  Terrifying.  Big enough to wash a car in, and equipped with what appeared to be multiple hoses.)

I'm not sure you can assign handicapped rooms to clearly non-physically handicapped people, who, during the reservation, requested no such special facilities.  What if somebody in a wheelchair showed up and needed a room?  Do they turn them away?  (Sorry folks, no room at the inn.)  Or does the handicapped person have to bumble around a non-handicapped room?  Or do they kick me out?

Whatever their hotel policy was, the only think I knew for certain was that I was not getting anywhere near that shower/car-wash.  So I called down to the desk to get a new room.  If they didn't have one, there was another hotel on the other side of the parking lot...

All was resolved without difficulty, and I hopped into the rental car and sped off to the Space and Rocket Center!

 The entrance to Space Camp!

Huntsville is nicknamed Rocket City for a reason.  Some chunk of NASA is there, Boeing (sponsored some lovely escalators in the airport - then covered the whole area with photos of the night sky and the word "Boeing"), and there is some sort of arsenal/testing range outside the city.  I was amused by the advertisements all over the waiting area of the Huntsville airport: uniformly defense contractors.  The graphic design was poorly executed but delightfully propaganda-laden: eagles carrying missiles in their talons, men in camouflage, tanks, explosions, American flags.

I arrived too late in the day to see the interior exhibits at the Space and Rocket Center - there is a big temporary one about Werner Von Braun up right now.  But that didn't even matter, because guess what the museum grounds are covered in?  That's right.  Rockets!

 Moon lander!  In a faux moon landscape!  I was a little disappointed that it wasn't shiny like the actual moon lander, but I suppose that you can't just go around wrapping things in copper foil (or whatever they use) because kids will get it all fingerprinty and gross, and unhappy Huntsvillians might try to steal it for scrap metal, and our environment would make it all green and patina-covered.

I appreciate that it's a polite request.

This was a chunk of the Skylab satellite, which I assume was used for the astronauts to practice Skylab things.  It had a pretend astronaut outside, upside-down, tending to a dish of some sort.

I'm not sure why they had the Yellow Submarine parked on a wagon next to a bunch of rockets and weapons.  Maybe the British left it here, during their Invasion?

More Skylab.

You'll need to know where this is.

The best subtitle ever.  I bet everyone on the creative team for this had kids under 8 year old.

Space Shuttle!

This was the test rocket booster.  Apparently they fired this one off five or six times, in some sort of giant fireproof test hangar.  I'm guessing the firery-end pointed down into the earth, not out into the open.