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Sophie studied her toes.  She sat on the double bed in which she'd spent the night, knees drawn up beneath her white lawn nightgown. Lifting her dark head, she gazed through a nearby window at a May morning that shone upon a blooming--but sternly regimented--rose garden.  In spite of the warm breeze, she shivered.

Then, hoping it wasn't true, for the hundredth time, she looked at the other narrow bed, the one next to hers.  Upon it lay her new husband, the rich grandfatherly man who'd paid her way from Germany, a man she'd married only yesterday.

Theodore Wildbach was quite dead.  Proper, in death as in life, he was flat on his back, hands folded on his chest. He looked like the stone knights lying in the cathedral in her home town.  That was how Theodore habitually slept, and how he'd died. Pale lips gaped inside a ring of neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper beard.

She'd discovered him upon awakening. She’d come close, staring, unable to believe her eyes. It was a terrible surprise, nowhere among the thousand twists of fate she'd imagined as she'd journeyed across sea and land to German Mills, Pennsylvania...

 

~Juliet Waldron
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Set in Post-Civil-War Pennsylvania, this tale of an arranged marriage is as much about family as it is about finding true love. Sophie is a sensitive young woman struggling to make sense of her a difficult past and to understand the strange ways of her new homeland. Karl is not only a veteran of the Great War, but scarred by the secret violence of his childhood. How they both learn to trust--this often-tested immigrant girl and the veteran with a chip on his shoulder--is the subject of this tender, All-American story.

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Groundhog Ruminations

The groundhog festival seems to get bigger every year here in PA. I remember when there were only a few members of the “inner circle” with top hats, Victorian black coats and silly, fake aboriginal names like “Thunder Maker” and “Cloud Rider” up on that stage. This thing has really taken off since the “Groundhog Day” movie in 1993. The ever-growing numbers in the “inner circle” and yearly attendees prove that.

The custom comes here from German settlers, who, in the old country, may have looked for bears to awaken as a sign of spring. In southeastern PA, you can still find a few “Grundsow” Lodges, where for that morning only Pennsylvania Dutch is spoken. The dawn festival involves speeches, skits and traditional foods. Traditionally, the attendees waited at the groundhog’s burrow to see if he’d emerge. If he was awake and came out, the weather had probably been warm, and an early spring—a signal to get ready for planting--could be predicted.

Phil is now, according to Punxsutawney legend, 120 years old, but anyone can see he’s been recently replaced. His newest incarnation is a slender young groundhog who first appeared on stage a few years back. (He had a runny nose yesterday, so I'm a bit worried about his health!)

He replaced an earlier, massively obese old fellow who probably came to the end of his decade-in-captivity life span. The older groundhog was far less human friendly, and did wonderfully entertaining things, like peeing on his handlers and sometimes chewing on their gloved hands. To me these acts of defiance were an important part of the show. After all, they’d dragged the poor critter out of his nice warm cage in town and brought him out in the middle of fireworks, flashing cameras, TV lights and a host of enthusiastic people (many of them, I’m sorry to report, drunk) screaming at the top of their lungs: “Phil-Phil-Phil!”

Heck, such treatment would unnerve anybody, not to mention a poor, overweight groundhog. Of course, not being eaten after being dragged out of your warm burrow is a definite improvement over the treatment many groundhogs received in the protein-starved winter past.

February 2 is also Candlemas on the Christian calendar, a/k/a the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin. Besides that, in medieval times it was one of the “cross-quarter” days on which bills were paid, workers hired and contracts drawn, important in every long ago market town. Both the religious observance and the business deals go back even further, into pagan times. Even the most casual observer can see that the days are growing longer now, and of course, the ancients, who were formidable astronomers, had noticed. February 2, known as Imbolc in the Celtic calendar, was sacred to the red-haired Mother Goddess Bridget, who tended a magical cauldron, and was patroness of poetry, music, dance and all the “arts of civilization.” Weather prediction was part of her festival, too, as the time of the spring planting was of vital importance.