Well-Versed Buckaroos Recite

--When 9-year-old Lisa Ann Jones heard about the weekend Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nev., she decided to write some verse too, along with the other buckaroos and wranglers. Several hundred cowboys and ranchers gathered during the weekend to recite their verses about a bucking horse, shooting a skunk or working in a manure-filled corral. And they unanimously decided they would like to do it again next year in Elko. Lindie Marie Hunting of West Point, Utah, 11 and wearing red cowboy boots, had something to say about horseshoes: “It might break his back, but he can’t think of that and he will nail on that shoe like no one else can care to do. Yes, in the morning he’ll be sore, but it beats being poor.” Lindie says, “Everyone can write poetry. Just start out slow.” Lisa Ann recited “Team and sleigh.” “What could be more fun on a cold winter day than helping the neighbors feed with a team and a sleigh. The horses tug hard as they pull their heavy load. The snow glistens brightly as they travel down the road.”

--Townsfolk and tourists wondering how much longer winter would last waited on Gobbler’s Knob for a group of men wearing tuxedos and top hats to pull a groundhog named Phil from a burrow in a 99-year-old ritual that always means good business for Punxsutawney, a western Pennsylvania factory town of 9,000. The word is: Expect an early spring. Punxsutawney Phil, a groundhog, or woodchuck, or marmot, failed to see his shadow--the legendary sign of spring--for only the seventh time. Had he seen his shadow, it would have meant six more weeks of winter, according to lore. A dozen Punxsutawney businessmen who make up the Inner Circle of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, have donned top hats and tuxedos to carry on the tongue-in-cheek tradition at Gobbler’s Knob, a wooded knoll about three miles from town, since 1888. The forecasting of Punxsutawney Phil has been so successful at putting the town on the map that other locations have joined the act.

--Princess Margaret, sister of Queen Elizabeth II, left London for a week’s visit to Washington and New York. She is due to visit an exhibition of treasures from British homes at Washington’s National Gallery and attend a performance by the Sadler’s Wells Royal Ballet company at New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music, aides said. The princess, 55, president of the Sadler’s Wells ballet company, left London’s Heathrow Airport accompanied by several ladies-in-waiting. She was to stay at the British Embassy in Washington. From New York, Margaret was scheduled to fly to the Caribbean island of Mustique, where she has a home, for a three-week vacation, aides said.