Frazz by Jef Mallett for January 04, 2020

Back when I was in junior high and heard about the Mexican habit of afternoon siestas, I arrogantly thot that such laziness helped explain why they’d never be as productive as the United States. Then I got off a plane in Phoenix, Arizona — only in August and still hundreds of miles north of Mexico — and got whacked in the face by a hot skillet. And it became clear to me that the natives understood their own weather a lot better than this dumb Wisconsin lad.

We also have the longest, outdoor ice skating trail! The down town walkways are great in winter if you work in the downtown and want to go to the bank or library or out for lunch. There are also apartments connected and it’s great for people with disabilities to get around. Thanks for the mention Jef! We also have great biking trails in the summer!

Productive geniuses absolutely do think sideways to how most folks think. That may not be mental illness, but it’s sure mental difference.

Kid’s description might just present a plan for the future for lots of places not yet affected by what seems to be happening as we speak.

They don’t call it Winterpeg for nothing. On the other hand, the coldest temperatures I have ever experienced were in Ontario, about on a parallel with where I live now in Maine. Much farther South than Winnipeg, but they must have been having a cold snap or something, because it was glacial. It felt like that helicopter scene in “The Day After.”

Winnipeg is flood prone mostly in the Spring but also in the Fall at times. I’m guessing here, but I bet the first instance of turning Winnipeg hiking trails into skating trails was Mother Nature’s doing. Then, humans noticed and helped the process along the following season. Can you imagine how flat a landscape you need in order to be able do do this on any kind of distance?

Cincinnati tried the same thing in the 1980s/90s. Network of second-story covered walkways, sometimes inside the buildings they linked, so you could walk most of downtown without going outside or even to street level. Most of them have been taken down by now as owners of the linked buildings worried about security and the dwindling number of users worried about Porkopolis’s peripatetic panhandlers who took up station or even residence in the sheltered space.

It’s not an either or proposition. It’s the way you learn to think when living in an insane environment.

there’s smart, and there’s crazy…and there’s crazy smart

MINNEAPOLIS has nine miles of connected buildings on the skywalk.

For someone reportedly from upper MI, he can show little knowledge/understanding of life where there is 4+ months of snow cover and weeks of temperatures staying sub-freezing. Many cities and campuses have developed undergrounds and surface enclosures to avoid the elements. That’s true for some southern locations where the summer heat is a bigger factor than winter cold.

And they flood them in the spring too

The projected high here in San Diego today is 74 F, I think I’ll go for a beach walk.

“Sometimes”?

Rochester, MN has a ton of tunnels and skyways, too.

So does Rochester MN, home to the Mayo Clinic Getting around downtown while not having to go outside in the winter. Excellent

As Mark Twain famously (allegedly) said, “The coldest winter I ever spend was a summer in San Francisco.”

Winterpeg is 732 KM north of Minneapolis. Congrats to the Blue Bombers.

“Mad genius” isn’t exactly a radical concept.

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The author and screenwriter extraordinaire Richard Price said, “the arts are no place to go looking for mental health.” And here I am. So if I went a little bit nuts for Winnipeg on a recent visit, well, I guess that works.

“Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.” Noel Coward