I have received a couple of email forwards that concern winter and amounts of snow. I almost never forward forwards on, but in this case there are two I would really like to post here.
The first one is a beautiful poem Jan sent me on the topic of winter and its beauty. I am going to paste it here in its entirety.
” WINTER “
by Abigail Elizabeth McIntyre
Shit It’s Cold!
The End
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This next one was entitled “Go M,” and certainly I am biased as that is where I grew up.
This text is from a county emergency manager in the western part of the Upper Peninsula of Michgan after a severe snow storm.
FYI:
Obama did not come.
FEMA did nothing.
No one howled for the government.
No one blamed the government.
Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton did not visit.
Our mayor did not blame Obama or anyone else.
No one asked for a FEMA Trailer House.
No one looted.
Nobody - I mean Nobody demanded the government do something.
Nobody expected the government to do anything either.
No Larry King, No Bill O’Rielly, No Oprah, No Chris Mathews and No Geraldo Rivera.
No Shaun Penn, No Barbara Striesand,
No Brad Pitts, No Hollywood types to be found.
Sent out caravans of SUV’s to pluck people out of snow engulfed cars.
The truck drivers pulled people out of snow banks and didn’t ask for a penny.
Local restaurants made food, and the police and fire departments delivered it to the snow bound families.
Families took in the stranded people - total strangers.
We put on an extra layers of clothes because up here it is “Work or Die”.
We did not wait for some affirmative action go, even though a Category 5 blizzard of this scale is not usual, we know it can happen and how to deal with it ourselves. government to get us out of a mess created by being immobilized by a welfare program that trades votes for ’sittin at home’ checks.
Frozen Waves..Mackinac Island
(I stole this from someone’s blog. I would love to see it in person.)
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Ok, Now I am finished with winter. I want summer NOW!
January 10th, 2010 at 9:47 am
WOW….those are some pics of blizzards!! My favorite picture is the frozen wave one VERY pretty and I’m in total awe that a wave could freeze like that.
January 10th, 2010 at 10:41 am
I remember seeing all that snow in the UP. Soo St. Marie was a place were they did not know where to put all the snow from the streets. They had to haul it away after a while because it was stacked so high. People do not mind it. Snow around their homes keeps the heating bill down. Of course, I would not want to live in the UP. Northern Michigan is not as bad in the winter and might be nice to live there.
I love those pictures of the snow. And that wave. I can’t help wonder how long it took to freeze. That lady must have been determined to get in that hot tub. After all, look at all the snow she had to shovel to get there. WOW
January 10th, 2010 at 4:06 pm
okay, no way can those frozen waves be real. First salt water requires a much lower temp to freeze, and second MOVING water doesn’t freeze, and certainly not in mid motion…so no way… it would take a wall of liquid nitrogen to freeze a wave like that…
January 10th, 2010 at 5:28 pm
Oh it is real. Iit is fresh water and not salt. I have seen waves on Lake Michigan freeze, but certainly not that high. I think it freezes layer by layer, but it does happen.
January 10th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
I agree with you Kathie. It does freeze, but it is done in layers. Some layers are larger then others. When I ice breakers go down the lake, they may cause the larger waves and those could be the ones that freeze. Sometimes the Soo Locks look a little like that when the water backs up and the locks are closed for the season.
January 10th, 2010 at 7:55 pm
I live on Mackinac Island and trust me, we do not get waves like that!
January 10th, 2010 at 9:04 pm
Well, I guess those waves are not what I thought they were. They are ice, and they are big. Pam…..I bet you can figure this out.
January 10th, 2010 at 11:02 pm
Hello Liz, thank you for debunking the wave myth. I thought i was going to have to take Kathie’s word that was real.
I am going to figure what out? It has to be photoshopped…i mean there are a couple of cues in the pictures that scream fake, i think… i mean when have you ever seen a blue icicle? IF a wave were flash frozen (which is not possible) i could see it maybe being blue…maybe. But the color is a lake or ocean isn’t an intrinsic part of the water, it’s a visual phenomenon that has something to do with refraction…and no way would water freeze blue, you know?
and in the first photo, the top one, the “waves” end way too abruptly on the right side when perspective would dictate that there should be more…
i dunno, i think it’s probably a photo of something with colors added to make it look like frozen waves, but i wouldn’t have a clue how to do it…
all i KNOW at this point is that in theory i live in the tropics, and i too am sick of cold. I cannot imagine what those of you who are experiencing “real” winter are going through.
January 10th, 2010 at 11:32 pm
Snopes to the rescue!!! http://www.snopes.com/photos/n.....icwave.asp
The pics aren’t photoshopped. The pics were taken at the Antarctic base of Dumont D’Urville. The “frozen wave” is a result of melting, not freezing.
January 11th, 2010 at 5:45 am
Okay, this is why I love this blog. First of all, I have no idea who Liz is; she found this via a google search on Quebec or something. First time commenters have to be approved, and I debated about just not approving her comment. I checked out her email, which is actually Mackinaw public schools, so I figured what the heck. I am wrong fifteen or twenty times an hour anyway. Then we find out it is melt. So, dang interesting.
1. The snow we had before Christmas that almost took what was left of my sanity, was blue. I had never seen blue snow before, but I was told that it was because it lacked moisture. Five miles from us got slushy snow, but ours was a fine powder, and it was blue. And I saw that blue snow lightening. Almost glacial.
2. I did not realize that enough people actually lived on Mackinaw Island in the winter to keep a school going. Liz has a blog, and I read that they have to go by plane for any needed goods in the winter, as the ferries stop running. Talk about cabin fever.
3. I have seen frozen waves; no they were not that big, but they were frozen waves.
4. Why would anyone start an email with pictures from one place and say they were from Mackinaw?
Gosh I love this blog, even though obviously no one laughed as hard at that poem as Ann and I did.
January 11th, 2010 at 8:58 am
Now I got an email from guy calling me a racist for putting the Michigan thing up. What do these people think this is? The Drudge Report?
January 11th, 2010 at 9:25 am
It took quite a bit of “pondering” to figure out why anyone would find the Marquette post racist. I came to one conclusion: Some folks live and breathe to be offended.
January 11th, 2010 at 10:16 am
well, let’s see….it used words like “Jesse Jackson”, and “affirmative action” and “welfare state”. Of course it’s racist, right?
actually, i really loved the poem. I agree totally with the poem. The only reason i do not have banana trees in my back yard is that i am too lazy to plant them, and here i s freezing my ass off. There is something fundamentally wrong with that, you know? It is supposed to be warm here.
Becky, as always, you’re my hero. Thank you.
January 11th, 2010 at 11:46 am
You’re Welcome! LOL
January 11th, 2010 at 6:47 pm
Forgot to mention how much I LOVED the first email….hahahaha!!
January 12th, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Thanks for posting my comment! I found your post through my Google Alerts - I’ve got one set up for “Mackinac.” We do get ice that sometimes looks blue like that. Check out this post to see a photo I took: http://quiltedturtle.blogspot......d-big.html
January 12th, 2010 at 1:25 pm
Liz, that photo is so pretty, thanks for sharing!
January 12th, 2010 at 4:38 pm
wow…okay, so ice can be blue. I seriously am impressed…and oddly i believe Liz.
It is slowly warming up here, although i just stopped at walmart to buy a hoodie…they don’t have any. Why am i not surprised by that?
January 12th, 2010 at 5:21 pm
Liz, that is a great blue ice photo. I saw blue snow here for the first time. along with blue snow lightening.
Had no idea enough people stayed on the island to warrant a school. K-12? Are you in the tourist business? I grew up in the Detroit area. Now living in the mountains of North Carolina. I also teach.
Come buy often.
January 12th, 2010 at 10:35 pm
Many many years ago, I had the opportunity (coughs, if you call it that), to work there, at Deep Freeze. To fly in and out often and live there as well… I declined, and those pictures show u exactly why I declined!
Now my one regret is this, I also had an opportunity to live and work in Scotland for 3 years. I was young and dump and didnt do it.
I would have fit right in with the scots, being scotirish. I would not have fit in at deep freeze at all.
And to work at Deep Freeze, u had to make sure all your teeth were in perfect condition, nothing wrong with any before u went there. Because that cold would make the pain unbearable, and the opportunity of going to the dentist often, was not available. My teeth would have passed the test, but there was no way, I could tolerate that bitter cold and constant cold. Not mentally, not emotionally, and not physically.
Deep Freeze would have been just as bad as staying in a terrible relationship, except there, I would have been stuck ;).