Punxsutawney Phil has made his periodic return to public affairs, and that means Ol’ Possum Puss can’t be far behind. Sure enough, in Monday’s paper, there was the beady-eyed visage of the junior senator from Alabama, grousing that President Obama isn’t showing enough leadership in the quest to cut the nation’s multi-trillion dollar budget deficit.

The 112th Congress has an insidious valentine to deliver to the ladies this year. The message is a little too long to fit on candy hearts, but it’s one you’ve surely heard before: women can’t be trusted to make decisions concerning their bodies, so men will make those for them.

Somehow it figures that The Year of Alabama Music should be kicked off by people from Conway, Arkansas. Hapless as we seem to be at, um, blowing our own horn, we should nevertheless be grateful for th

Mama joined the StoryCorps. She didn’t enlist. She was drafted, at the suggestion of one of her daughters-in-law, and dragooned into service one sunny January afternoon. I think she served with honor.

True disorder looms in every corner of the planet, at least according to a guy who teaches astronomy at a community college in Minnesota and also those who believe planets have corners.

Words matter. I think they do, anyway; we certainly have to come up with a lot of them to fill this paper every week. We try to be judicious in our choice of words, despite what it may look like on these pages.

I started off the new year as I start off as many days of any year as I can, with a healthy jolt of the java. My rote ingestion of coffee has long since passed the point of mere addiction, now as necessary as any vitamin or mineral to the maintenance and sustenance of my very organism.

We have reached that time of the year when we just don’t have any year left. Those of us compelled to mark such passages in the popular press consider two options: remarking upon the 12 months just passed or speculating upon the next 12 to come.

Santa Claus, the most prominent visage in the world this time of year, is in fact a true International Man of Mystery. How much do you really know about the stranger walking around your darkened house each Christmas Eve?

I got to ride in a Christmas parade last week and I recommend that pastime to you. Watching a parade is as quaint a bunch of fun as you’ll ever want to have, but being in the antic procession itself puts a delightfully different perspective on the matter.