JANUARY - here we are up to our knees in winter.  What do we have to look forward to?
What the groundhog predicts for the future.  All you ever wanted to know about the turn
of the year (February 2nd).

GROUNDHOG DAY: A SHADOWY CELEBRATION

 

On February second Groundhog Day is celebrated.  It's not

every animal who has its own holiday or who has such a reputation

as a prognosticator of weather.  Or to put it another way, why do

otherwise sane people get up before dawn in the dead of winter

and walk to the top of a hill looking for a groundhog burrow?

Why do we do what we do?  

            Marmota monax, groundhog, a member of the rodent family, is

distinguished only by his once a year appearance on February 2nd

to predict the arrival of spring.    To clear up any confusion groundhogs and woodchucks are both

Marmota monax.  Woodchuck comes from a mispronounced Native

American word ”wuchuk” or ”otcheck” which may have to do with the

tongue twister usually brought up in conjunction with him: How

much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck
wood?  Or, if  you've practiced that one, how much ground could a

groundhog hog if a groundhog would hog ground.

The groundhog/woodchuck is a weed eater - grasses, plantain,

clover, common in the northeastern United States and Southern

Canada.  He loves the early morning and the late afternoon sun.

I often see one who sits on a fence post and watches traffic

going by on the expressway.  I had an idea about a groundhog love

affair broken up by the New York State Department of

Transportation.  She lived beyond the northbound lane and he

lived over the median past the southbound lane.  Perhaps that is

one explanation for the number of dead groundhogs on our

highways.  They are a common sight roadside, a brown bundle

appearing to wear a red corsage, which is soon pounded to the

color of concrete.

         Not as fast on his feet as his cousin the squirrel, the

groundhog is slow moving, but feisty when aroused.  I've seen one

rise hissing on his hind legs to fight off a dog.  He looked

formidable indeed.  They are not overly bright, but don't seem to

do much harm unless you have an alfalfa field overrun by them.

Farmers tell me they  burrow under a field undermining it so

badly that when you drive a tractor over the field, you

find yourself capsized, the big front wheels sitting in a roomy

grasslined den.

            Gardeners complain that young shoots and leaves become an

attraction for groundhogs, as well as rabbits, but contend that

while rabbits nibble, groundhogs act like pigs, chomping through
a row of vegetables or herbs until there is nothing left.  The

worst thing about them is their catholic diet.  Vicious gardeners

retaliate with rifles, or gas bombs. 

            Groundhogs usually mate in February or March and within a

month a litter of four or five babies are born.  By mid summer

the family disperses and searches out new burrows and begins to

eat to put on a layer of fat for the long sleep. In fall, the

groundhog enters his burrow and closes it up.  He curls into a

ball, head between the legs, arms folded around the neck and goes

to sleep.  The body temperature drops to between 40 and 50

degrees, the pulse is faint, respiration slows, and the long

winter passes by overhead while the groundhog sleeps like the

dead.  He can neither feel nor hear and it would take several

hours in a very warm place to awaken him.

 Early settlers found groundhogs tasty especially in groundhog

stew, and if you ever visit Punxsutawney, PA, for the

Prognosticalion festivities you can purchase a groundhog cook

book or two although this seems rather cannabalistic for a town

that made its reputation on the groundhog's annual predictions. 

            Historians guess that the groundhog came into modern

folklore via the German settlement of Pennsylvania and their

belief that the badger of their native land would predict good or

bad luck for sowing and planting.  Badgers, nowhere as docile as

the native groundhogs, were soon replaced.  Others suggest it was
the hedgehog who predicted, equally truculent and harder to

handle than the badger.  So it seems that prognostication fell to

the groundhog because of its reputation as an easy going, easy to

catch, easy to handle, animal, or are there other reasons.

In Druid Britain of 2000 to 3000 years ago there were four

main holidays.  Because Druids worshiped the sun, their holidays were the four

main turning points of the year.  They were fine accurate

astronomers.  The year ended at All Saints Day or November first.

All the fires were extinguished and new ones built (fires, little

suns).

     The other holidays were May Day on May first (Beltaine) when

the sun began to grow strong; August first (Lugnasad) when it was

at its peak; and February first (Imbolc) when it was about as far

away as it would ever get.  These dates are the halfway points

between the solstices (6/21 and 12/21) and the equinoxes (3/21

and 9/21).  Since the Druids liked three-day holidays as much as

we love do, it's not hard to assume that the

festivities on Imbolc drifted over onto the day after.

            Imbolc was associated with the sacred flames that purified

the land and encouraged fertility and the emergence of the sun

from its winter sleep.  On February first rites of

prognostication were held.  A great bonfire was built on a

hilltop and all the young men made their mark or name on a white

stone which was placed in the fire.  When the fire cooled, each

man searched for his stone and if he didn't find it, if the fire
had taken it, he had been chosen for the supreme honor.   He had

been selected by Bel (the sun god) to offer his life/spirit to be

sacrificed for the purification and general good of the tribe.

This bears close association with Shirley Jackson's short story

of the scapegoat, "The Lottery."  

The one who is chosen to be sacrificed for the good of the

tribe, the offering, fertilizes the fields for the coming

planting time.  This is a common motif of early agricultural

societys’ religious practices.  Until the 1800's this February

ritual was observed in the Highlands of Scotland only 'the chosen

one' jumped over or ran between the bonfires in a metaphor of a

metaphor.  (Bonfire is said to be an elision of ”bone fire” by

etymologists). 

            Imbolc is also associated with the lambing season when the

sheep lactated and was sometimes called ”oimelc” which means

”sheep's milk”.  This is related to the fertility aspect of the

mother goddess Brigit or Brigantia (High One, in Celtic), a

respected member of the Druid's pantheon, daughter of Dana, the

female principle.  Brigit was the goddess of prophecy and

divination as well as fertility, home, hearth, and healing.

February 1st was the day sacred to Brigit.   

The similarity of dates, that point in temperate climates

where the sun is as far away from the earth as it will ever be

and at its weakest, six weeks between the formal turning points

of our solar year make the connection between Druids and groundhog

 "predictions.”

Also, there is the relationship between

the groundhog and  mother goddess cults, and the synchronistic

tendency of the Romans to adapt local gods to their own, a

practice which was kept by the Roman Catholic Church which was

busy 'civilizing' the known world.

             In the Roman Catholic pantheon of saints there is a St.

Brigit who enters about 400 to 500 A.D.  St. Brigit was said to

have been born at sunrise on February 1st.  She became one of the

patron saints of Ireland and at Kildare she founded the first

nunnery.  The nuns of St. Brigit in Kildare tended a holy fire

(like Rome's Vestal Virgins) up until the monastaries were

destroyed by Henry VIII in 1539. 

            One of the legends about St. Brigit is the story of a blind

nun for whom Brigit restored sight.  When the nun Dara saw, she

realized that the clarity of sight blurred God in the eye of her

soul and asked to be returned to the beauty of darkness.  The

Druids were especially fond of riddles such as this which are

based on reversals.

The saint was said to have bathed in milk (lamb's milk?) at

birth and her house appeared to be on fire (born of the flame).

She is revered as the midwife of the Virgin Mary (the mother of

the lamb).

            Candlemas Day (February 2nd) commemorates the purification

of the Virgin Mary.  According to Jewish law Mary was required to

go to the temple in Jerusalem to be purified forty days after

the birth of Jesus (the winter solstice) and to present him to
God.   Luke tells us that he was "a light to lighten the

Gentiles. . . ."  For Roman Catholics February 2nd  is also the

time for blessing of candles for the altar and the congregation

used to march through the church holding lighted tapers

representing the entry of Christ, the Light of the World, into

the Temple in Jerusalem.

   In Celtic folklore candles are used for divination or to

keep evil spirits away with a circle of flame.  They are of

course, the little suns. Long after the last Druid had gone to

his fiery reward, farmers circled the fields carrying torches to

keep the evil spirits away and purify the field for the seed.

Burning off the fields in spring is a ritual that only recently

ended with local anti-burning ordinances.

            The French scholar Joseph Vendryes suggests that Candlemas

is patterned on the Roman Lustrations (feast of purification held

in early February) commemorating the actions of the earth mother

goddess Ceres (or Demeter) who sought her daughter Persephone (or

Kore) ("European Religions, Ancient" 767).  Persephone had been

kidnapped by Pluto (Dis or Hades), the lord of the underworld

(darkness), and Ceres, distraught, neglected her earthly duties

so that darkness fell over the earth and all the vegetation died

while she hunted for her daughter.  When Persephone returned from

the underworld, spring came to the earth and life began again.

Freed from the dark realm of Pluto, Persephone brought spring to

the world but because she had eaten six seeds of the pomegranate,
she was required to spend six months in each realm.

            According to Thomas Bulfinch's rendition of the tale, during

her search for Persephone, Ceres had made a promise to the son of

a family who had befriended her in her grief.  She had promised

to teach him the use of the plough and how to sow seed.  She

taught him about the grains and agriculture and he was to teach

mankind.  Triptolemus built a temple for Ceres in Eleusis and she

was worshiped under the name of the Eleusinian

mysteries.  Bulfinch calls the fable an

allegory, signifying the seed corn which appears to be dead,

 is buried under the ground (resides with Pluto), and is reborn.

.Agricultural societies were fascinated with the miracle of the

seed.  A dull piece of matter, a tiny pellet which appeared to

have no life at all was buried in the earth at the right time

(this is all important) and it comes back to life.  This is why

we bury our dead in the ground like seeds.

            The groundhog was sacred to many earth mother cults because

he lived burrowed in the earth.  He appeared to die (hibernating)

and in the spring was born again much like the seed.  Bears were

also sacred and for the same reason, but I don't intend to burrow

any deeper into this aspect.  

            When the days lengthen, when winter lets go of the earth the

Great Mother or her representative will let you know when it's
time to plant just as the lengthening daylight hours let the seed

know it's time to begin the cycle of growth.

And so the old weather rhyme passed down from Druid times :

            If Candlemas be fair and bright,

            Come winter, have another flight.

            If Candlemas brings clouds and rain

            Go winter, and come not back again.                                                                                                 These agricultural societies lived much closer to the edge of

survival than we do.  Crop failure, bad weather, were not just

financial disaster, but starvation, death.  Good weather meant

everything and they were willing to sacrifice much for it.

            One of the most important jobs then of the Druid priests was

to predict the proper time to plant.  Since rhyme was holy

to the Druids we might assume these old rhymes are adaptations

of memorable predictions. 

In the northeast United States, already six weeks in the

dark grasp of winter, Punxsutawney Phil comes out of his

Pennsylvania burrow on the top of Gobbler's Knob and makes his

prediction.  If he sees his shadow, he's scared back into his

hole.  So we should all have the good sense to be afraid of the

dark in us.  If he sees only the gray winter sky, spring will

come soon.   Their predictions have become an amusing story for

a slow news day..

Punxsutawney Phil has been predicting for 103 years

(or his descendants since ten years is a good long life for a

groundhog).  Young men in the Highlands of Scotland were still building

bonfires in the middle of the 19th century to celebrate the

immanent return of the sun, and who knows how long ago the Celtic

peoples of Europe gathered to hear the Druid priests interpret

the signs and rhyme the results.

            One way or another, we drag the past with us.  It casts a long shadow. 

 

Wanting to start the New Year on a flat foot I thought you readers might enjoy learning about the rejection process.  Please, keep
sending out, rejection notes are getting very scarce.  We need
them. 

 

                        REJECTION:  YES OR NO

 

 

 

            Some of us so love rejection that we put ourselves in the

way of it.  We are used to it, we want it, we need it, we take up

occupations where we can be assured of getting it.  It's our

cocaine, our crack.

            I was born when my mother was just beginning menopause.

 We are euphimistically referred to as "change of life babies."

 I'm sure the last thing in the world she wanted was a baby. 

My sister was recovering from rheumatic fever and required constant care,

two male cousins had moved in with us because of the Depression

 My mother's baby brother  (32) lived with us between trips as a steward on the

Cunard line's Bermuda run, and he was so fussy if a shirt wasn't

ironed right, he'd throw it back in the wash.  She let him get

away with it.  Me, I was the one who was rejected.  I was the one

she didn't have the time for, have the heart for.  I know she was

busy.  I'm sorry.  But early on, I learned what life had in store

for me.  Those early lessons are the ones we learn best.

            I grew up in a gypsy way, my parents moving every other

year.  This inures you to being the outsider, the one who doesn't

fit in, the one on the edge, the rejected one.  My parents paid

little attention to me, busy packing and unpacking, planning the

next move.

            When I got into high school I selected boys to like who

never liked me back.  That way I could be sure of a constant

supply of my narcotic.  When I applied for jobs I always applied

for the one I was least likely to get.  Ditto.

            One of my best job rejections was at a manufacturing company

in a small upstate city.  I was collecting unemployment benefits and the

counselor at the State Employment Office sent me out to interview for a

 job in the personnel department.  They made the appointment and

gave me a little card with the time and place  When I arrived the woman

in the office handed me an application to fill out before she would talk to me.

 Fill this out first, she insisted.  The application wanted to know if I was

 allergic to any chemicals, what size smock I wore, if I had any relatives

employed at the company.  It sounded like an application for

working in the manufacturing facility itself, not the office.

I tried to mention it to her, but she was seething about some previous life

which I became the focus for.  The woman behind the desk snatched

the application out of my hands.  I said that I'd been sent about the opening

 in Personnel.  She told me there was no opening in personnel.  And in response

 to my open mouth, she turned her back on me and began shuffling papers on her desk. 

            When I got to the parking lot someone had parked behind my

car, blocking me in.  I went over to the employees entrance and

talked to the guard who called the owner of the car.  As the

owner stormed across the lot toward me, I assumed the position of the

sorry one.  I mentioned that the slots hadn't been marked in any way and I was

sorry if I'd parked in his place.  He said nothing,  got in his

car and peeled out spraying me with gravel.

            When the unemployment counselor asked me how the interview

went, I told him there was no job.  He didn't believe me and

called up to make sure I'd been there.  They couldn't find

my application.  I think I convinced him that I'd been there

because he didn't turn me in for whatever they turn you in for --

missing an arranged interview while collecting unemployment

benefits?    But this experience serves as an example of total

rejection.  There aren't many days in your life that will provide

you with such perfection.

            As if my daily life couldn't provide me with enough rejection I

elected to fancy myself a writer so I could provide myself with

additional rejection on a daily basis.  I was about 22 when I

sent out my first poem.  I sent it to "The New Yorker".  Why not

start at the top.  Better to be rejected by "The New Yorker" than

some lesser rejecter.  When the poem came back with the little

printed rejection card I was so embarrassed I tore it up into

little pieces and fed them out to my wastepaper basket a few

flutters at a time so no one would tape the pieces together and

discover what it was.  I was humiliated by the fact that I'd been

rejected.  I was so young I hadn't yet recognized my destiny.

            Over the years, however,  I've become a connoisseur of

rejection.  Most magazines don't have the resources and

imagination available to compete with manufacturing companies.

They are left with only a little note to do their work for them.

They put you in your ordinary place:  "Sorry, we have decided

against including your work in our magazine"; or, "we are sorry

that the material you submitted is not suitable for our magazine."

Ordinary rejection.  Not much imagination.  The tone is not

arrogant enough to make you angry.  You just stick it in your

drawer after having stabbed it with a pair of scissors several

times and forget it.

            Some magazines send reverse rejections.  They don't want you

to reject them just because they rejected you.  They begin with

sad tales about the millions of envelopes pouring in to their

tiny office, their unpaid staff who do this for the love of

literature, rising printing costs, the times, the state of the

art, etc.  Bad timing. You're not likely to feel sympathy for a

magazine who has just told you "we cannot use the enclosed

material."  

            Some magazines try to combine rejection with a sales pitch:

"Perhaps a sample issue will help you to decide which poems to

send."  I like that one a great deal.  I used it myself during a

brief stint as an editor (rejecter).  Of course I was rejected by

the rejectees (the potential audience/purchaser).  So be it.

            My favorite flattering rejection letter begins:  "your

manuscript has been rejected, but we liked your style and insist

on your sending us more."  Several paragraphs further down is the

hook, "submissions must be accompanied with a ten dollar reading

fee."  No seasoned rejectee will fall for that one.  We'll take

our rejection straight up, thanks.

            My favorite rejection notes are perfectly insulting.  This

takes daring and imagination and such a head full of conceit

there's no room for additional opinions.  These rejecters are at

the top of the class.  They write letters you can revel in.   You

have been put firmly in your place by a master.  These

are the rejection notes which become collector's items.  "Thank

you for your submission, but the judges feel you are not making a

contribution to American letters."  Now that's a rejection.  It's

hard to maintain standards these days. 

            Many rejecters of late are so neutral it's hard to find

anything worth getting riled up about.  However, many editors

scribble little notes at the bottom for you to savor.  My

personal favorite came from a magazine asking for new and

interesting work:  "nothing new or interesting here. . . ."

handwritten on the bottom of the note does wonders for your blood

pressure. Yes.  Good stuff.

            Lately, however, I've noticed an alarming trend in

rejection letters:  Excessive sorryness.  These notes are so

sorry you feel sorry you made them feel sorry by sending them

material.  Don't fall for that.  I want to reassure them -- hey,

don't be sorry.  I send out regularly, alphabetically,

systematically.  You're one magazine on a long list. This doesn't mean you

are not making a contribution to American Letters.  Relax.

However, replying  gets into the dangerous area.  Never respond.  Don't bother.

 Go out and get another rejection, a better one. 

            With the advent of emails you are lucky if you get a rejection

at all.  You just never hear.  At the end of the year you can delete

those past their expiration date.  My favorite email rejection came

with the email addresses and names of all the rejectees in the TO: line.

That’s pretty poor.  I was almost tempted to go online and check

 to see how bad their mag was.   

            As a serious collector.  I have sent to places for no other reason than

they have particularly gruesome, nasty, illiterate or exciting notes:  For

example "Mad" magazine: a full page drawing of Alfred E. Newman

 giving you the finger.  Hard to beat that.

            A little magazine from the 70s called "Vile" sent rejection notes that

said: "not vile enough." I got one. "Kayak" had a picture of a man with his

head in a vise.  Good stuff if a rejection note can provoke a

smile from the rejectee. 

            In the course of a twenty year period of sending out I've collected over

a pound of rejection notes, some printed squares, full page

letters, scribbled "sorry" on a scrap of paper with

indecipherable initials.  I've managed to get my share of what I

needed.  Along the way I've often thought of not sending out.

That would solve the problem of rejection notes entirely, but

it's like rejecting your mother.  You can't do it. Nothing in the

world will change the fact that she's your mother, your biology,

if not your destiny.