London Reflection

—a Mercurious observation from March 1—

A London train station is a perfect microcosm of London itself. Today I checked out of my hotel and made my way to Liverpool Street station, on my way to Norwich to visit a fellow Geezer and his family. With 30 minutes to kill before the train departed, I trudged down the stairs to the public restroom. The cost for using the lue is 30p, and after sorting through a handful of change to identify 10p and 20p coins, I paused near the side of the restroom entry lobby and watched the crowd.

There were perhaps a hundred people milling about, some entering, some leaving the restroom There were all types represented, all nationalities—exactly like London itself. While I was waiting, five different foreign nationals approached me, mistaking me for a Brit who could help them pick out their own 30p fee from the handful of change they had. (This in itself tells you how friendly the British people are to visitors—in New York, foreign visitors would soon learn to be wary of asking natives for help.)  Within five minutes,  a Chinese business man, two round Ethiopian women, a fellow I believe was Portuguese, and a woman who was probably from Somalia all approached me for help picking out their restroom change.

Liverpool St. Station, north London

The restroom attendant was offering similar help to others in the crowd. He himself was Indian or Pakistani, his shiny black hair tied back in a ponytail. He was exceedingly patient with the crowd, and especially so to the elderly British couples, whose problem wasn’t identifying the proper coin combinations, but figuring out how to insert them into the coin-operated turnstiles. These older Brits kept wanting to hand the coins to the attendant, and couldn’t quite figure out the mechanisms of the turnstiles.  Covering the floor were perhaps 200 pigeons flowing among the human feet, pecking about for crumbs of food,yet somehow never getting stepped on. It was utter chaos, yet at the same time a well organized chaos.

London is one of my favorite cities, for this exact reason. There is no more cosmopolitan city on earth. Walk a busy neighborhood for two hours at night, and you will hear snatches of Farsi, the clicking dialects of subcontinental Africa,  all manner of Romance languages, the guttural tones of Russian and Finland,  and the occasional American twang from the southwest region. British English is certainly heard less often than the sum total of foreign languages spoken.

The visual types are equally diverse. The Brits themselves seem to be of two classes: ruddy-faced elderly British couples wearing raincoats with tweed caps and sturdy walking shoes, walking with canes; and mod young people, painfully thin with tight trousers and thin pointed shoes, and haircuts cut close and stylishly so to produce an androgynous look that makes it hard to distinguish male from female.

Among the foreigners, the young, wealthy Indian women almost always walk in pairs. They wear very expensive and stylish western clothes, precisely applied makeup, and top-of-the line perfumes that linger in the air for just a few moments after they pass you on the street. They are insanely beautiful, with sleek long hair that could not be any blacker yet at the same time seems to reflect every color of the rainbow.

They are in sharp contrast to many of the African women, who are round of face and figure, and often dress in styles of their home countries, with colorful wraps and  headwear. They are interesting and beautiful, too, but in a different way.

The many Asian people are oddly anonymous, as they don’t seem to speak all that much, and seem to be intent on not being visible at all. The exception are those who are clearly businessman. Asian business men often dress in suits, shoes and overcoats that are clearly very, very expensive.

There is a class of teenager and young adult that spans national boundaries. They wear Goth or neomilitary styles, with heavy black books, metal chains, combat trousers, Mohawk haircuts, body piercings and tattoos of all kinds. Yet for all their attempts to look fearsome and threatening, these young people seem utterly harmless.

London is a unique city for its almost perfect mixture of organization and chaos. Paris is very stylish and beautiful, but there is something a little haughty and antiseptic about it. Frankfurt and other German cities are beautiful in an old world way, but they are so carefully organized and precise that some of the life is squeezed out of them. Rome is another of my favorite cities, as I very much like the creative chaos and pure happiness that seems to emanate from the culture. But I can see how the frantic chaos could wear you out if you lived in Rome.

London, on the other hand, is a fairly perfect mixture of control and chaos, and aside from the high cost of living, it would not be at all hard for me to live here. And there is also the polite friendliness of the city, which is truly unique in my experience of large cities. If, as a pedestrian for example, a cab honks at you, it is almost certainly because you have done something foolishly dangerous. Bus drivers in London are invariably polite if you’re confused about the fare or proper use of an Oyster metro card.

As I was waiting from the train station today, the big schedule board was slow posting the platform from which my train was leaving. From a distance of thirty yards or so, a gatekeeper noticed my momentary puzzlement as I stood among a crowd of thirty people or so, and he left his post to approach me.  He studied my reservation sheet. “Yes sir, your train always leaves from platform 12. They really should have posted it by now. They have just finished cleaning your train, so please follow me and I’ll point out your carriage.”

Can you imagine this kind of thing at Grand Central in Manhattan?  

Observations from a Geezer in Management

Over the last few years, International business travel has become less fun, and in my opinion the parties responsible for this are Microsoft, Apple, and the other leading edge technology companies.

Time was when travel was an opportunity for business people to go incognito for a short while, at least while in transit to and from the destination meetings. For myself, anyway (since I have a strong contemplative nature that borders on the ani-social) a business trip offered a refreshing opportunity to go off the grid for a little while and temporarily drop the responsibility of bossing people around. There used to be a nice element of anonymity to business travel that made it a freeing experience for me, and undoubtedly for the people who have to work with me daily.

But these days there is really no such thing as being off-the-grid for most business travelers, and connectedness in the blu-tooth era is now so ingrained that there is virtually no difference between sitting in your own office with underlings 20 feet away and managing them from the back row of a sales conference 4,000 miles away in London.  We have already had two live-meeting video  teleconferences with the home office that are virtually indistinguishable from meetings held in person. Except for the time difference, there’s now not much difference between meetings where everybody sits in the room at the same time, and those where the attendees are in three separate continents.

More’s the pity. This kind of business culture might be good for business in the immediate sense: don’t all managers reward those people who slavishly  put in more hours than the job requires?  But I don’t think it’s particularly good for people and likely not really good for business in the longer term. My staff could undoubtedly use some relief from my constant participation, just as I could use a break from my own boss’s micromanagement.  Americans work a hell of a lot, and the impact of this obsession is not better results. We’d be better off, I think, if our business leaders used their weekends to get way from work and recharge with the goal of doing better work in fewer hours, and if they encouraged others to do likewise  More hours only rarely lead to more genuine productivity, after all. But like most good modern people in the private business world today,  I answered emails at 10:30 last night, and at 5:00 am  this morning.

For this entire morning I’ve been directing employees from afar via computer, signing contracts and approvals, and otherwise making myself a huge pest to staff members who, I imagine, were looking for a break from my meddling while I was gone. My email browser can tell me, in an instant, which of the employees are using their computers at any given moment. If I was being really diligent, I would be making some notes on which employees seem to be slacking off today.  Alas, in the modern business environment, the cat is never away, and the mice don’t get to play all that much.

I have told people, though, that I will be truly off the grid early next week when I travel north of London to visit another geezer (our esteemed and grumpy Professor) and his lovely wife.  Secretly, I hope the home office has some fun in those days when I’m not in touch, and perhaps take an extended lunch or two and leaves a little early if spring starts early in Minneapolis. I have to pretend to be sternly disapproving of this behavior, but quietly, it makes me smile with subversive approval.  

The Sensual Geezer

I am a notorious cheap-skate. And nowhere more-so than when it comes to hair cuts. No doubt this originates in early family life, an era when my dad gathered my brothers and me out in the yard or basement once each month and went at our skulls with an electric shears that we later learned was borrowed from the local farmer—who at one time used it for shearing the manes and tails of his work horses.

Commercial haircuts in those days were about $4, and the $12 a month it would cost to cut three brats' hair was significant money to a beginning schoolteacher in 1960. So I understand fully why my dad chose this homespun route, and it perhaps explains why even today I'm loath to pay more than $15 or $20 for somebody to simply cut my hair. I actually kind of envy balding men who can save lots of cash by simply shaving their heads.

But this weekend I stumbled on a new hair salon catering to the sports enthusiast crowd. It features a bunch of big-screen TVs playing a variety of sporting events, a decor making use of metal lockers and signed portraits of sports stars, and stylists wearing mock team uniforms. All told, just a fairly routine and slightly comic marketing strategy. But since the basic haircut was a mere $17—well within my geezer cheap-skate budget—what the heck?  I stopped in.

As a new-comer, I learned that I qualified for a free up-grade to something called the "MVP package."  Again, what the heck....it was a free upgrade, after all, so I was perfectly game. The haircut itself was actually quite good as these bargain stylists go. But then we got to the post haircut fun. First, I was led back to darkened room and seated in a comfortable lounging chair that vibrated delightfully according to whatever whim I dialed into the controls. I was then reclined over a sink oozing sensual music from speakers built into the sides of the cabinet. A warm, moist, slightly scented towel was placed over my neck and face, and then the stylist performed an ever-so wonderful shampoo with some kind of tingling solution,  in which the aim was not so much clean hair as a really  diligent full massage of the head and scalp. Her fingers worked my scalp and temples for a full ten minutes or so—although frankly, my out-of-body experience made it hard to judge time.

Then I took my chair back out in the main styling room, where my hair was blow-dried, and then the coup de grace delivered: a final vibrating massage of the shoulders and neck. My, my. And what is the regular cost for this extra package? I asked, dreamily.

The MVP package, it seems, is a mere $5 upgrade to the basic $17 haircut. Good god above: what have I been missing all these years?

Talk about a brilliant marketing ploy. I typically put off haircuts, grumpily, for three or four months at a time. But I can suddenly see myself quite willingly getting haircuts considerably more often.

On the way home, I decided to wash the car clean of the late February slush and grime. This is usually an action where my normal cheapskate instincts requires me to pump quarters into a machines to scrub my car by hand with brushes, but in my newfound hedonism of the moment, I decided on a drive-through version where robotic machines do all the work for you. Scalp tingling delightfully, shoulders and neck fully relaxed, a great haircut reflecting back at me in the rear-view mirror,  I watched the machinery do its thing. At one point, nozzles spray a tri-colored solution of blue, purple and yellow foams all over your car. Senses already aglow, I found the dripping colors mingling on my windows to be both hypnotic and just a little hallucinogenic. It took me back to the day of watching the film Fantastic Planet in college while under the influence of herbs.

I have decided to change my ways and get haircuts more frequently. I am, however, going to limit it to no more than two or three each week.

A Tale of Two Professionals

They are adorably cute, the young professionals who clog the skyways of downtown Minneapolis at lunchtime. Between the ages of 25 to 35 or so, these downtown professionals have a distinct "uniform" that they wear—a dress code of acceptable garb that allows for very little variation, even while it tries to distinguish itself from the dress of the traditional geezer professionals.

For the young crowd, only black will do. The men's suits and the women's business dresses are invariably black for this crowd. For the women, there may be a bit of color offered by scoop neck blouses or leotard tops beneath jet black blazers; and the men may offer a very small bit of color in the dress shirts or ties; but even here, black is so much the fashion that you very often see the dress shirts and ties all in matching black.The young men who work for ad agencies may well let their shirt tails hang open under their suit coats, but this, too, is only a small variation on the costume theme.

Isolate the young professionals from downtown in one room,  and you see more black than you would at a state funeral.

The young men of course often sport those spiky haircuts so much the fashion; and rather than real beards they all wear fashionable stubble, even though I'm told that this is now becoming passe in other parts of the country, where the Ben Affleck full beard is coming into vogue. (Thank God; the scruffy stubble face has been an eye-sore for far too long.) The women enjoy a little more freedom in styles. You see long hair and short hair, high-heels and elegant calf-high boots.

The young professionals are always in a terrific hurry, as they are so new to their careers that 1-hour lunch hour is very closely enforced. They will flock to whatever sandwich shop or sushi counter is most trendy at the moment,  never mind that they might wait in line for 30 minute. And who can blame them? They are there, after all, to socialize with pretty members of the opposite sex, so I see why they're willing to stand and laugh and flirt for 30 minutes.

 If they have time after lunch, they will do a little shopping in the high-end department stores in order to prove themselves. In their efforts to grow up, young adults are far more concerned about expensive clothing, I find, than most of the geezer professionals who can actually afford it.

The older professionals who are approaching or are solid members of the geezer years have an entirely different air about them. While I have always been a considerably more disheveled fellow than is the norm, virtually all the older professional workers have adopted a more relaxed attitude in dress and habit. I frequently see a very well-renowned criminal defense lawyer during lunch hours—a guy who gets his choice of whatever high-profile case is underway in the midwest. He's fellow who can quite easily afford $3,000 suits, yet except for the days when he is in court, his lunchtime attire is old comfortable loafers, jeans or khaki slacks, and comfortable baggy sweaters.  Other old guys might be seen in (gasp) corduroy sports coats, cardigan sweaters, or suits that are brown or blue rather than the requisite black that seems inviolable to the youngsters. And they really don't care what anybody else thinks. Eventually you get to a point where comfort is more important than style.

The geezers are generally less frantic and rushed in their lunchtime behavior. They might go to lunch late and dawdle over the New York Times for an extra half hour. They seem far less concerned about the social aspects of lunch. Unlike the kids who huddle and chatter like flocks of sparrows around the sandwich shops, geezer professionals seem to be more comfortable in solitude, or lunching with a single companion at a sidewalk cafe.

They are adorably cute, these young urban professionals. But I'm glad I'm not one of them anymore.

Apropos of Nothing in Particular....

About 12 years ago, a massive 90-ft. tall sugar maple tree in my back yard, already at least a century old, began to shed huge limbs. After it destroyed my deck as well as the fences of neighbors on both sides, we decided to have the tree removed. Wasn't an easy decision, since I'm more fond of a nice tree than I am of many people.

On removal day, though, I had the removal crew leave a massive stump, some 10 feet tall and five feet in diameter, standing in the yard. I was vaguely planning to have some sort of outrageous sculpture carved from the stump, since it was still pretty good hardwood.

In practice, though, the stump became a self-drying source of firewood. For the next decade, whenever I wanted to build a fire—or when I simply wanted to burn off some frustration—I'd grab the ax and hack off a few more pounds of good, dry maple for the fireplace.

In the last year, or two, though, most of the firewood has been exhausted, and what remained was a gradually softening lump of decaying wood, now approaching ground level. This has been interesting in and of itself, for watching the spectacle of decay and the life that grows up in its midst, is a pretty fascinating study. All manner of interesting bugs and fungi have taken up home in this old stump over the years, and many birds and chipmunks have used it for food and shelter.

This weekend, though, I realized that it was time to take the stump off to ground level, and so several hours were spent hacking out its remaining bones.

Near the geographic center of the stump, within three or four inches of was the original center of tree judging from it's annual growth rings, I came upon the remains of a strand of ordinary farmer's barbed wire. It was an older style of barbed wire, and given its location, I realized that this must be an artifact of a time when our portion of urban Minneapolis was a farmstead. We are part of what is known as the Lyndale farmstead addition to the city. It's an area just south of the big city lakes, which themselves were country "getaway" resorts for the very wealthy families of old Minneapolis, with names such as Pillsbury. A hundred years ago or so, the land our house sits on was rural pastureland found well south of even the weekend resort locations. In those days, this was deep, deep countryside.

Our home was built in 1924, so it's pretty clear that this little piece of barbed wire and the tree it was nailed to is older than our home by a fair measure. Over the years, the maple healed itself of the indignity of being used as a fence post, covering over the wire with living wood, as it watched its home go from prairie wetlands to pasture to country home, then pre-war suburban development, than modern urban neighborhood with internet wires threading through its branches.

A couple of things come to mind as I look at this little artifact. One is the resilience of the natural healing process. In its maturity, there was nothing about this stately tree that indicated its lowly beginnning as a mere fence post, and it very successfully covered over its wound so that virtually no sign was evident. The piece of wire you see here was fully two feet from the visible world for many decades, buried inside wood tissue until two days ago.

But the second observation is that the tree was always a product of its wound, and the barbed wire nailed to it in the days of steam engines became an integral part of its nature, right up to the moment the last decaying wood was reabsorbed by the earth. I now remember that one side of the tree had a magnificent burl knot, with intricate wood rings that caused a friend of mine to request it for woodworking. It's entirely possible that the outer manifestation of this burl was in fact the tree's scar tissue built up over the barbed wire irritation within it. My maple tree was karma manifested, for everything that happened to it became an essential part of its nature.

And if a single piece of ordinary biodegradable iron barbed wire can survive a century buried inside a living tree, imagine how many plastic Aquafina bottles our great-great-great-great grandchildren will be digging up 500 years from now.

When Good Geezers Do Nothing...

—this article contributed by The Professor—

Seriously. This is kind of advertisement is no longer unusual. 

It’s not unusual to be dismayed by the Sunday paper; news is sometimes distressing, and always provocative.  But every once in a while there comes along a bit of trivia that should make a geezer stand up (slowly) and take notice.  

In this Sunday’s Times of London it was reported that men now average over 1700 pounds a year (about 2,300 dollars) on beauty products.  And it’s not just beauty products: gender equity is catching up in areas like cosmetic surgery.  American idol host Simon Cowell (granted, not a role model for most geezers) states that “to me Botox is no more unusual than toothpaste.  Breasts aren’t the only things being augmented either: requests for pectoral implants have risen notably,  and cosmetic surgeon Michael Progers offers: “Men want to enhance their masculinity, so jawline enhancement is important.  George Clooney looks attractive because of his strong jawline.”  Cosmetic interventions such as eyebrow plucking and body waxing are now a common thing, obtaining their own euphemistic description: “manscaping.”

One is tempted to be reasonable and say “so what? To each their own”, and for a while I tried to stay in that camp.  We are supposed to be non-judgemental about things, aren’t we?   But when did exercising judgement get to be such a bad thing to do? And let’s face it: some of this stuff is just ridiculous in a literal sense: it is "eminently worthy of ridicule."

 In thinking about what to do in the face of this encroaching silliness, I am tempted to slightly alter Edmund Burke’s well-known statement about evil and say: “All that is necessary for the triumph of silliness is for good men to do nothing.”  I think that doing nothing (and saying nothing) as this social trend builds is at minimum ill-advised and at worst threatening to the life(style) of sensible, spoiled men —in whose company I place myself.

Of the many advantages men have enjoyed over the years of patriarchy (perhaps unfairly), one of the most appreciated is that we can more or less dress and present ourselves in a way of our own choosing.  As long as men stay relatively neat and clean, with a minimum of body odour, we are have usually been allowed to go about our sartorial business as we please.  In this area there is a marked gender contrast.  Women have been consistently victimized by a culture where,  if they wished to be regarded seriously, a certain adherence to fashion and cosmetic norms is expected.  

One rather obvious example: consider the comment, attention and distraction caused by a woman choosing not to shave her legs. I’m not experienced in this area, but I would guess that most professional women would consider not shaving their legs to be beyond a reasonable possibility in a professional environment.  The social/visual/grooming norm has been set, and there is in this instance little a person can do but conform.  To a lesser degree, these social norms present themselves to women in the need to have hair regularly “done” and to have it done in a relatively current fashion.  I would argue the same could be said for dress. I’m not ashamed to say (although my wife says I should be) that I obtained my current job in 1987 after an interview to which I wore a conservative, cheap JC Penney suit which I had purchased in 1968. Could a woman reasonably choose to show up for a job interview in a twenty year old suit? 

The results of such social norms being set so strongly go beyond mere visual conformity.  Women’s clothes are far more expensive that men’s, and arguably of a much lower quality (they are certainly less durable.)  Women’s hair-cuts cost much more (but this—amusingly—doesn’t stop increasing numbers of men from switching from the cheap, sensible barber shop to the “hair salon.”)  Put simply: unchecked social pressures—and materialism—have contributed to establish social norms that significantly diminish the choices many women can make when determining how to present themselves in a professional environment.

These fellows need a little bit of gentle
ridicule. We geezers owe it to them. How else
will they realize their silliness?

One can argue the forces behind all of this.  Many instinctively point to sexism and assume that men’s “gaze” is the dominant propellant for these expectations.  I would argue that there is a lot of evidence to support the theory that women dress and present themselves as much to impress other women as to impress or attract men, but that’s for a separate essay.  The bottom line is that, by buying fashion magazines, by dressing their children a certain way, by actively noting the choice of dress at public events, by commenting in the rest room on others’ fashion taste (or lack thereof) people create an environment that reinforces certain body and dress expectations.  

Men have traditionally been relatively free from such socially-imposed expectations.  But with men spending 2,300 dollars on beauty products each year, can such expectations be far behind?  Can we prevent the day when a manicure becomes a businessman’s essential preparation for an out of town meeting, or when Botox injections become the antidote when a fifty-something man is labeled “behind the times?”

To my mind—and this will sound harsh—there is only one prudent course of action to take: we must make fun of those men who are contributing to the trend toward adoption of traditionally feminine beauty techniques.  The argument that it isn’t any geezer’s business what a Metrosexual up-and-comer does has a certain first-blush logic.  But when one thinks about how social expectations are formed, and how such expectations can come to impose restrictions (and additional cost) upon men who wish to be considered “traditionalists,” the issue isn’t quite so straightforward. 

Can we count on the fact that we will always be able to show up in a sensible suit and black wing-tips without being labelled “out-of-touch?”  Clearly young men are searching for ways by which they can project a sense of masculinity.  And if the reason young men look to fashion magazines and cosmetic surgery for solutions here because there are no older men close enough to them to provide guidance is only one of many theories to explain some of these trends.  But, really, would a quiet word along the lines of “your bronze base looks good, but—really—men don’t really need that kind of thing” be such a bad thing to offer someone who is seemingly foundering in the complicated currents of gender identity and projection? 

They took Jason, and suggested that he dye his hair and have his nails dealt with, and I said nothing; they took Josh and convinced him that only Dior could possibly be acceptable, and I said nothing; they took Jeremy and introduced him to defoliant, moisturizers and filler, and I said nothing. 

And then they came for me…

Embarrassed for Minnesotans

I'm just a little bit embarrassed for Minnesota today.

Time was when it would have taken a two-foot snowstorm and/or -30 degree temps for a week or two before we'd get at all concerned about the weather. We delighted in being a state that could stoically bear anything and everything the weather gods could throw at us. Not any more, it seems; we've become a state of wimps, judging from the evidence of the last two days.

Over the weekend, the local television news stations were touting a serious and dangerous winter storm bearing in from the southwest. When I looked at the details of the forecast, though, I was rather taken aback: 3-6" of snow, mixed with a little sleet.

And in the event itself, the situation for even more tame—about 2.5-3", maybe.

Now, this is starts to qualify as meaningful
 snow. In my day, we thought nothing of
walking to school barefoot in weather like this.
Not like today's wimpy youth. 

This is no "storm," for crying out loud.  It's barely even a snowfall worth mentioning. Surely back in the day (which is to say the 1950s through 80s) we would barely have given this little bit of weather a second glance. It's no more newsworthy than a full moon once a month. But for the last decade or two, Minnesota has become almost as nervous about the weather as, say, Charlotte NC. It's starting to be embarrassing.

In recent years, the typical evening news forecast of a local television affiliate dedicates a full 15 minutes out of  a thirty minute broadcast to hysteria about the weather. And it isn't just a winter phenomenon; in the summer months, we're now quite hysterical about the incredibly faint odds that we will be sucked up by a tornado during one of the frequent thunderstorms that plague the midwest from April to August.

These days, it's really not uncommon now for Minnesota schools to close if we get a foot of snow, and for mothers to huddle in the basement with their kids if there is a report of a possible tornado 200 or 300 miles away. Back in the days of Geezer youth, on the other hand, I remember exactly zero days when we closed school for snow; and a pending thunderstorm was an opportunity for kids to gather in the yard in excitement and stare with wonder at the sky, hoping desperately that we might see a funnel cloud.

Now, Minnesota has always been overly fascinated by the weather. It comes from our farm heritage, where favorable weather could bless your family's financial stability, and a terrible storm might mean utter bankruptcy. But the traditional farmer, while obsessed with the weather, was and is still a pretty stoic guy. What in the world has lead to this recent collapse of Minnesota weather stoicism?

It is, I think, partly because we have universally become a nation feeling entitled to continual comfort. Our cars these days have dual climate controls—as though it's too much to ask a husband and wife to agree on the temperature settings. We have leather seats that heat our asses in the winter, and cool them in the summer.  It seems to escape people that it makes sense to feel cold when it's cold outside, and to sweat when it's hot. Bad weather is uncomfortable, and hence we feel entitled to complain about it a lot,  since we believe our right to never-ending comfort is inviolable.

Secondly, though, and maybe more importantly, I blame the news media. The networks and local affiliates seem quite desperate for drama these days, and since there is weather every day they must make good use of it for the 24-hour news cycle. Minnesota is not a state where there is a lot of traditional drama, so we make full use of weather to feed the news cycle beast. There is nothing so obvious as the disappointment of a television weather forecaster who must acknowledge that the "storm of the century" he'd been predicting was a flat-out lie.

I hate to say it, but we Minnesotans are on the verge of losing our reputation to the folks in Massachusetts and Connecticut, who didn't complain much at all when they were just belted with 3 ft. of snow. They will complain loads about the Celtics and Patriots, but bear an ice storm very nicely.

Suck it up, fellow Minnesotans. I want to hear no more complaining about the weather this year. Or at least not until ice-fishing season starts next November.