(The late crooner Sonny Bono, right, and the sultry young Cher from a screenshot of their monster hit “I Got You Babe).

Punxatawny Phil emerged from his burrow on Gobbler’s Knob and saw no shadow. The burly man in the top hat held the hefty rodent aloft, and proclaimed loudly: “There is no shadow to be cast! An early spring is my forecast!”

He added, “Take your jackets off, you’re not going to need them!”

Well, I respect the meteorological background of many large furry mammals, and that is certainly possible. By way of contrast, the people at the Old Farmer’s Almanac are saying it is going to be a late-lingering winter, and there are two more major storms before the month is out. I was listening for the Sonny & Cher song “I Got You, Babe!” to signify whether or not we were trapped in an endless loop of always-todays and never tomorrow, but I could hear nothing.

I know I have been going on as a bit of a one-trick pony of late. It has been my way of escaping to the past to avoid the present, and I confess I have been playing the album “Look At Us” to try to drown out the noise of the endless election. I am trapped this morning just as durably as Bill Murray in his marvelous film about the events of an endless day in Punxatawny, PA.

The Politics makes me feel as if we are all trapped in the movie, and each morning there will be a new blast of bombast, dissembling, waffling, insinuation and public flatulence that passes for policy discourse. I keep looking around for a grown-up to appear and knock these collective chuckleheads together, but I fear we are out of stock on what used to pass for those folks, and the term ‘common sense’ was not the inverse concept of something really stupid.

None of this is sustainable, For goodness sake, we are borrowing money to get through this very year of execution, and if you or I tried that, the creditors would soon be crowded around our door howling for retribution. If they are not worried, I suppose it is foolish for the rest of us to be concerned and just ride this road as long as we can. But I don’t think we ought to count on the bridge not being washed out up ahead, and perhaps not too far.

But the Big Melt is continuing, and all we have to look out for this morning is the drains backing up. The cars have been bathed in a salt-and-chemical bath, and they need work, though this might be a day too soon to take drastic action. The banks along the highways are still there, bleeding their treated onto the roadway, which makes the woods along the Anacostia Freeway impassible, so I can’t do a damn thing about finding the Last Stone, SE9. That will have to wait until Punxatawny Phil’s prophecy comes true, and the Spring arrives early.

I talked to the Blonde, though, and she is up for the adventure, and Jon-without is onboard, as is Argo. Hell, we may have enough interest to charter a bus for the throng! Accordingly, I am confident that this time a land assault from the highway is going to do the trick and finish off the adventure.

I understand there was some sort of political thing out in the Great Heartland last night. I didn’t follow it, since we were at Front Page with JPeter, Jon-without, TLB, Chanteuse Mary, Heather and New Mark the Frogman. It was a grand time, starting before the counting began and ending before the count was announced. When I got home I decided to just turn in and let the results roll over me in the morning.

Sure enough, in the warm dark embrace of the eiderdown, the clock radio began to babble at the usual time and told me all I needed to know. And then Sonny began to croon to his Cher:

“They say we’re young
And we don’t know…”

I smiled in the darkness. Neither of those assertions is true. Not for those of us who remember the tune when it was new, and Chastity Bono was still a girl. But I think I am going to be hearing that song until sometime in November.

(I often wonder if that is Punxatawny Phil’s great grandfather that Sonny Bono is wearing. The vest looks oddly familiar, you know? Do you see a shadow?)

Copyright 2016 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303