the groundhog day project

There’s a new arrival on my shelf. That Beanie Baby Punxsutawney Phil on the lower shelf (in the photo below) was a gift from the speech team for which I am one of the coaches. It was supposed to be part of my gift basket thing at last week’s banquet but hadn’t arrived in the mail in time. I got it yesterday before class. And, since I was asked yesterday by Tracey (next year’s Vice President of our speech team) what stuff I’ve got on my Groundhog Day Project shelf (after I mentioned that this guy would end up there), I will explain what’s in the photo. Top shelf has Paul Hannam’s The Magic of Groundhog Day (which I just realized I may have called The Groundhog Day Effect in a recent blog— which I cannot seem to locate, so maybe I’m imagining it —or maybe I was referring to the concept and not the title, in which case all is well), Ryan Gilbey’s BFI critique of Groundhog Day , Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha and Thomas Moore’s Utopia for the books. In front of them is a Woodsto...

There may be a scientific explanation for why groundhogs (in the wild) would actually wake up midwinter. Consider this a sequel to my entry about the origins of Groundhog Day. Groundhogs are very simple animals; Stutz (2006) tells us, “They live pretty solitary lives, are good swimmers and adequate climbers, and, when not browsing on grasses, plants, and tree bark, spend the time working on their underground network of burrows. These activities take up half their lives. They spend the other half asleep. (p. 21) He goes on to explain how “winter in the northern hemisphere can mean sparse pickings” for a plant eater like the groundhog, hence they have evolved, like many other mammals, to hibernate through the colder months because that’s “better than retiring hungry every night and a lot less work than migrating”—and here’s where Stutz is just rude—“especially if you’re a lumpy creature with stubby legs.” Then Stutz provides a lengthy explanation about the hormone melatonin. Th...