Opening Speech 2025

Delivered by Benjamin Torcellini at Duck Day.

A great opening speech should always begin with a great welcome. I give a warm (or perhaps cold, very cold) welcome to all of you who are here, and a warmer welcome to those who are sitting on the hearth of your fireplace, fondly remembering the days of July. Welcome to the 11th annual Duck Day.

Aristotle, a 3rd Century BC philosopher, and probably one of the best-known philosophers, had a desire to know the weather. He authored a 4-part book, called “Meteorology”, which is about how to understand one thing, that being the weather.

Humans, well before Aristotle, desired to know the weather. For instance, the Babylonians, some of which predated Aristotle and the Greeks by 1500 years, would use the positions of the stars and planets to predict the seasons, and when the rainy season would be.

During the Middle Ages in Europe there arose a belief that the badger would emerge from his hibernation on the holiday of Candlemas, an ancient Christian holiday celebrated on February 2. If he saw his shadow, winter would be long, and he would return to hibernation. If he did not see his shadow, a spring would be upon him. When the Dutch came to Pennsylvania, they brought this tradition to the New World, however, they used a groundhog instead.

The earliest written mention of the February 2 events for predicting the weather are in a diary from 1840 in Pennsylvania. This tradition continues to this day, with the Groundhog, who is infamous for not being accurate in Pennsylvania… This created a problem. Pennsylvania weather is simple compared to disastrous New England weather.

Mark Twain wrote in his infamous Weather Speech, “The people of New England are by nature patient and forbearing, but there are some things which they will not stand. Every year they kill a lot of poets for writing about "Beautiful Spring." These are generally casual visitors, who bring their notions of spring from somewhere else, and cannot, of course, know how the natives feel about spring.”

The weather in New England is something special, something that cannot be predicted by a furry rodent who rarely even looks at the weather. This is why a new critter came to the stage, to perhaps save the people of the New England corridor from a possible winter catastrophe.

This critter was not a rodent of any sort. He does not hibernate at all. Instead, he followed in his father’s websteps, getting a Ph.D. in weather preduckting from Stormy Hights Academy and now he spends his days in his personal weather observatory examining the weather, so that on February 2, he may come to tell the people the truth. Will there be a long winter, of cold, of wind, of ice? Or will there be a spring, of birds singing, and new growth? He is able to preduckt accurately, without fault. For 3 years, he has never spoken wrong, and not once will he mislead the people of such a troubled climate.

We would like to thank 1st Selectman Deb Richards for permission to host this event; State Representative Pat Boyd and State Senator Jeff Gordon for years of support, my brothers, and founders of Duck Day; Micah and Isaac Torcellini, who are managing the website, social media, and press releases from college. We would like to remember the late Carol Davidge who gave this event wings to fly. We would also like to give an immense thank you to our volunteers: Pastor Tim Howard as the director of technology; Adam Minor as our photographer; Aaron Minor as duck handler and all who have attended Duck Day over the past 11 years.

And now we present…

Scramble the Duck

We ask that there is no flash photography during the prediction as it can throw a false shadow. Thank You.