This blog is meant to be a way for me to work through immense grief. January 25, 2016. A birthday unlike any other. I spent the day driving up to Punxsatawney, PA, home of the groundhog Phil, and inspiration of sorts for the movie Groundhog Day with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, a film that holds a special place in my heart. I was deeply disillusioned to find that the little hommlet of Punxsatawney was a mummified remainder of what had once been a thriving if small industrial Pennsylvania town. The empty storefronts, sad people, and bad food were far worse than anything Phil Connors had to endure again and again every 6:00 am. The Punxsatawney of Bill Murray was mere Purgatory; the real town would have felt like a deep dark hell. This saddened me, as I had hoped for picturesque, touristy, quaint, and still lively. I was greeted only with death moths. The film had, I knew, not been filmed in the real Punxsatawney, but rather in a fine place called Woodstock, Indiana. But I had ...
Once upon a time, when the bricks of his life were yet uncracked, still sun-warmed, and the mortar was crisper in its eggshell white , a small boy broke his mother’s heart. In his pale fist he held a porcelain figurine, one of several his mother held dear and which she had lovingly arranged along windowsills...his tiny hand held the best one—a genuine Hummel...a small boy with blonde wavy hair, hiding an armful of flowers—or apples, as his eyes preferred to see, chestnut-colored and fragrant crimson — and at his feet appeared a tiny dog. She treasured it above all others, because it was special, because it was well-made and artistic—and because she thought it looked a little like the boy who now held its fate in his hand. The porcelain boy looked perhaps more rosy-cheeked and shining, and, sad to say, less cruel. He was fussing now, tantrum-mouthed and stormy-eyed, knowing he shouldn’t touch it, let alone lift it above the cast-iron shimmer of the bathtub. She treasur...