COLUMBUS, Ohio: It’s Groundhog Day in Punxsuntawney, Pennsylvania. The town is known for a groundhog named Phil. Phil is over a hundred years old and still wakes up from hibernation long enough to crawl out of his hole every year on February 2.
Television reporters say Phil saw his shadow this morning. But the sun seldom shows up on a blustery winter morning in Pennsylvania. So the local Chamber of Commerce sometimes uses an LED spotlight to trick Phil into thinking he saw a shadow. If the TV weather folks in Pittsburgh, Erie, and Philadelphia can agree on a specific week that Spring will arrive, they coordinate with Phil’s handlers on whether or not a shadow will be witnessed by the crowd of 20,000.
Meanwhile, across the Mason Dixon Line in West Virginia, another groundhog, French Creek Freddie, has horned in (or dug in) on the action to do his own predictions. West Virginia does not trust Pennsylvania to tell ‘em when it will be warm enough to discard their flannel shirts and start digging ramps.
And Ohio decided they needed their own groundhog. They named him Buckeye Chuck (after the Ohio State football team). Marion was the home of Buckeye Chuck until two years ago when the mayor decided Marion prefers to be known as the home of President Warren G. Harding. So, the mayor hauled Buckeye Chuck to Cleveland which gave him a new home in the Cleveland Museum. Yes, Chuck has dug under ancient artifacts including Hopewell spear points, ceramic pots, dinosaur bones, and the last championship trophies won by the Browns and Indians. Kinda like those two teams, for the past 20 years the groundhog has had a losing record.
In financial news, the “temporary freeze” announced by Trump has been an eyeopener for taxpayers. Howls went up from a lot of organizations we never even heard of, much less realized we’re financing their existence. The temporary freeze affects plenty of legitimate uses of our money. But it also exposes a lot of others, especially NGOs. I bet that when most of us hear about a Non-Governmental Organization doing charity work, we assume it is funded by generous wealthy donors and other contributors. But we have learned that many are funded almost entirely by government grants. And their activities are opposed by most of us.
You probably know that NGOs have been providing housing, food, transportation and other “free” benefits to people who crossed our border illegally. I bet you didn’t know they are also way down in Mexico, helping and encouraging these migrants to come to the border and cross it. And we’re paying for it! And the politically connected NGO leaders are making huge salaries.
Since President Trump changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico, our Ohio Governor DeWine should immediately declare, “From now on, the Lake on our northern border will be Lake Ohio.” How it ever got connected with Erie, PA, we’ll never know. Erie has only a couple of miles of lakefront. Any boat on Lake Erie has about a one percent chance of docking in Erie. Ohio has 260 miles of shoreline, far more than PA and NY on this miss-named Lake Erie. Now, Canada has more miles on the lake than all 3 states combined, but they already have Lake Ontario.
You might say, Ohio already has a river, why do they need a lake. Well, a little-known fact is the Ohio River is Ohio’s in name only. West Virginia and Kentucky own it. If Ohio wants to dip their big toe in the water, they have to ask permission. If Ohio catches fish in the Ohio River, they have to toss half of them to the opposite shore. Except carp. Ohio is encouraged to keep all the carp they catch.
Historic quote by Will Rogers:
“Most people and actors appearing on the stage have some writer to write their material . . . Congress is good enough for me. They have been writing my material for years… Besides, nothing is so funny as something done in all seriousness.” WA #78, June 8, 1924