I don’t know if anyone noticed, but today is an important date for New Mexico, particularly for many of the long-established Hispanic families here in Socorro County.

And I don’t mean Groundhog Day.

It was on Feb. 2, 1848, that everyone living in Nuevo Mexico instantly became Americans. Well, that’s a generalization, but according to a speech U.S. Army General Kearny gave from the rooftop of a house on Las Vegas’s plaza, that’s the essence of it. It was all because of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and that speech actually happened a few months later, after the U.S. paid Mexico $15 million for something like a half-million square miles of Mexican territory. I wonder what was going through the minds of the folks in Las Vegas when they heard Kearny declare, “I absolve you from all allegiance to the Mexican government and from all obedience to General Armijo. He is no longer your governor. I am your governor.” That was that. Done, and done.

Well, not quite “done” since people are still arguing over Spanish Land Grants. But that’s just as big of a can of worms as the Rio Grande Compact, so never mind.

Today is also the observance of the meteorological mythology referenced above; that a psychic rodent – hedgehog, groundhog, call it what you will – can predict the weather.

According to my Old Farmer’s Almanac, much of Candlemas, also known as Groundhog Day, is rooted in the seasons – estimating how soon spring-like weather will come and when to plant the crops. For instance, it was not held as a good omen if the day itself was bright and sunny, for that betokened snow and frost to continue to the hiring of the laborers six weeks later on Lady Day – the Feast of the Annunciation. But if it was cloudy and dark, warmth and rain would thaw out the fields and have them ready for planting.

Or, as the old proverb goes:

If Candlemas day be fair and bright

Winter will have another fight

If Candlemas Day brings clouds and rain

Winter won’t come again

Anyway, speaking of that animal Bill Murray called a large squirrel in the movie “Groundhog Day,” unnamed sources in the groundhog’s front office have leaked that Phil The Groundhog will predict that spring is on the way, but – correct me if I’m wrong – that forecast only goes for Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.

I mean, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no point of winter after Christmas. But like the lowly groundhog, I won’t pass up any excuse to go back to bed.

The question is: Are we on the verge of another glorious New Mexico spring? Will it be snowing cottonwood blossoms already? These questions and more are put to the groundhog in Pennsylvania, and guess what? It’s a groundhog.

A groundhog is a badger. And to paraphrase Alfonso Bedoya in “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” “We don’t need no stinkin’ badgers.”

Another harbinger of the coming of spring is the Community Arts Party this Saturday, where kids can release their creative juices and do art. Picasso once said every child is an artist, but here’s a secret: the Arts Party is for everybody. This leads me to think that maybe everyone – somewhere deep down, beneath their reasoning and logic – is an artist. In one form or another.

And you don’t have to wear a beret, have the handle of a brush clenched between your teeth or hobnob at fancy parties discussing the pros and cons of Proust or Frank Lloyd Wright.

What I mean is, art and creativity is personal stuff. People secretly write poetry to express a feeling, tell funny stories to make people laugh, impulsively doodle while on the phone, make a lamp out of cactus, take a snapshot of a sunset, do needlepoint or crochet something, make up a song, invent a new recipe. When you get down to it, there is a uniquely human urge to create something.

Everyone, I suspect, has at least one friend who does something artistic. And more times than not that person does it for the sheer pleasure of creating something that didn’t exist before. It’s like Emerson said, “every artist was first an amateur.”

Full disclosure: Art and creative endeavors were all around me growing up. Two of my sisters were artists, my younger brother and sister were both in the high school band and my older brother played bongos. Me? I was usually hanging out in the Dairy Queen parking lot sitting on a car hood talking about cars, girls and baseball—three things I never was good at.

John Larson, El Defensor Chieftain