Making Winter jam

In gloriously shining sun, we bravely set forth to ice-covered Prospect Park this morning. The ROADS have been de-iced and cleared (well, of course cars come first), but the paths are all ice-covered and a bit scary. Vast tracts of shiny, plastic-looking snow, and a remarkable number of footprints on the frozen lake. The open water is even smaller, and there are more birds, including some boldly-striped shovelers, a type of duck with a beak that looks like a shovel. Black and brown and white reminiscent of Paris couture c. 1961. One poor little dead gull encased in ice (bottom photo). Could not get in for a close picture of the birds for fear of sliding right into the lake. Oh, what happened to that fearless girl of yesteryear?

The only well-shoveled path we saw was by Vanderbilt Playground where, by a STRANGE coincidence, Greg Mocker of WPIX 11 did a piece on the unshoveled walks. Greg, you need to come back and do similar great pieces on the 100's of other unshoveled paths - don't worry, they're not going anywhere.

The only snow not icy was in the Nethermead, where the park is preparing for the WinterJam festival this weekend. A huge machine (first photo) has compacted and combed the snow into beautiful hard powder for skiing, etc., and they're busy putting up mini-slopes for skiing or snowboarding, a sort of 1/10 pipe (too small to be a 1/2 pipe). Also, tent areas, looks like all kinds of things for kids. Hope it works, since there is no ice skating this year (old rink closed, new rink nowhere near open), and kids need something to enjoy winter.

Saw Anne and Ed, whom we haven't seen in a while. Anne says the birdwatchers and counters are no longer counting geese - don't want to give the Parks Dept. any info they might use to massacre them this year. There don't seem to be a huge number of them.