The team of best enthusiasm associates of Punxsutawney Phil will broad .
The annual ritual dates back to more than a century in western Pennsylvania, with far older roots In European folklore, but Bill Murray’s film was needed in 1993 to transform it into what it is today, with tens of thousands of Juerguistas on the scene and impersed to the United States and beyond.
The crowd last year may have been a record and the organizers are preparing for a similar participation on Sunday.
If the members of the Punxsutawney Groundhog club declare that Phil did not see his shadow, that is said to begin at the beginning of spring. If you see it, there are six more weeks of winter, although what that means can be subjective.
Phil has predicted a longer winter much more frequently than a spring, and one effort to track your precision He concluded that he was right less than half of the time.
Tom Dunkel, president of Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, says that there are two types of people who do the walk through the Gobber knob: the faithful who seek to validate their beliefs and the skeptics who wish to confirm their skepticism.
Phil communicates his prognosis through “Groundhog-ES” with the help of a special cane that Dunkel has inherited as the club leader. It is not as if they spoke in English words.
“He will like Wink, will snort, he will chat, he, you know, nod,” Dunkel said.
The assistance is free, but it costs $ 5 to take a bus and avoid a 1 mile walk (1.6 kilometers) from the middle of the city to the stage where the prediction is performed, about 80 miles (123 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh . The need for so many buses is the reason why local schools, where the sports pet is the chucks, near when the day of the marmot falls on a working day.
A new welcome center opened four years ago and the club is working in a second life space for Phil and his family so that they can divide the time between Gobbler’s Knob and Phil’s house in the city library. The club is also placing large video screens and more powerful speakers this year to help attendees to the back of the crowd to follow the procedures.
“It’s a party where you really don’t owe anyone,” said Aj Dereume, who among the internal circle of 15 club members serves as a Phil manager. “You are understanding belief, you know, in something that is fun to believe.”
Phil has a wife, Punxsutawve Phyllis, and two puppies born this spring, Shadow and Sunny, although his family will not join him on stage for the great event. The Marmota family eats fruits and vegetables, receives daily visits from Dereume and see a veterinarian at least once a year.
The club’s tradition is that Phil is Woodchuck himself who has been broadcasting meteorological forecasts for the last century, thanks to an “elixir of life” that keeps him immortal.
“There is only one phil, and it is not something that can be transmitted,” Dunkel said. “Like Santa Claus and Easter bunny, there is only one.”
Marmot Day celebrationformal and informal, are carried out in many cities of Pennsylvania and in other places on Sunday. There have been events of Marmota’s Day in at least 28 US states and Canadian provinces.
By
