Annual Groundhog tribute

   Other than it being Peggy's birth month, February is no favorite month for me.

For one thing, for 28 days (sometimes 29) we have to hear people mispronounce the name of the month, which is FEBrooary, not FEBuary. Sorry to be punctilious about it, but Mrs Rennie insisted on us saying it properly in 4th grade, and I shall not let her down now. 

What's more, no one seems to stumble over "May" or "October," so let's give Feb a little love. It's Valentine's month, after all (known in Baltimore as "Valentime's Day," but anyway.

No, here's the thing with February. I have friends from other places around the world, and every year around this time I get texts and emails asking if we really truly believe that what some groundhog sees on February 2 is an accurate prognostication of the weather for the next month and a half.

I mean, if you read that some remote villagers thousands of miles removed from what we laughingly call "civilization" took a rodent out of his habitat, gave him a human male name, and held him up before lights and camera and the rising sun, and then decided that he did or did not see his shadow, and stated that the weather for the next six weeks had some relevance to the beast's shadow, you would shake your head.

Folklore it is, and I wouldn't even fuss about it, except that it comes in a time in our nation's history that people who can vote, drive, own property and hold office are awash in other folklore - "JFK Jr is really alive!" "You can drop nuclear weapons on hurricanes to blunt their damaging effects!" "School shootings didn't happen!" "Wildfires in California were started by Jewish space lasers" "No one should make money by shorting stocks except for established capitalist entities" and "Benjamin Franklin was the only president of the United States who was never president of the United States."

All right, I stole the last one from Firesign Theater. But when my international friends, who still can't believe that Sonny Bono used to be a US Congressman, ask me about the others, I'm just going to be Greene with envy.

Sunday Rerun: Wheels in Motion

 Add this name to the list of people we like:

Eliot Middleton, out of McClellanville, South Carolina, is multi-talented. He owns a barbecue restaurant (they have a million of them down there!) and he works part-time as a auto mechanic. He began fixing up old beaters and donating them to people in need of transportation, and a news outlet featured him to show his generosity.

Next thing you know, he had more than 800 cars donated to the cause and over $100,000 in cash donations.

The thing to understand about McClellanville is, it's a small, rural town. There is no sort of public transportation like buses. No taxicabs or Ubers or anything. You either drive, or get a ride, or you walk.

Middleton takes old, seemingly unusable “junkers” and makes them run again. Then, he gives them away to people who need cars. He does this on his own time and with no payment beyond a heartfelt thanks. So far, he has donated about 30 cars.

People in the small rural community are dependent on cars. There is no public transportation. Taxis and rideshare companies don’t exist here.

Eliot helps a lot of single moms, older folks, and people who are out looking for work. We've all known people with that mechanical gift of taking a wheezy old Wrangler or a crappy Chrysler and getting it back on the road, and Mr Middleton does it for the sake of others. He doesn't take money for the car once he signs it over to someone in need.

So there he was, the day after the news and the social sites showed him, sitting there with over 1500 phone messages. And he already had two jobs plus his car repair thing.

His sister Desiree stepped up to the plate and set up the Village to Village Foundation as a nonprofit organization, and that outfit was given the Jefferson Award for public service.  That's an award created in 1973 "to honor public and private citizens who show the power of service to others in bringing out the greatness that lies within us all.”

The older and wiser among us always counseled, "If you want something done right, ask a busy person." Mr Middleton has his restaurant and his part time job and he still finds time to staff his foundation and get an assembly line of sorts underway, bringing in junkers and sending out hope for those in need.

It's easy to spot the holes in society where hopes and dreams fall through to the ground. People such as Eliot Middleton are fixing the holes in that net and helping. Let's thank them and encourage them!