M.A. Soucheray, of St. Paul, who has worked as a volunteer at various ice-sculpting events for the Winter Carnival, read with alarm last week that the carnival is short of money to buy ice blocks for this year’s competition.
Last year, the carnival claimed it was short of money to hold the coronations for King Boreas and the Queen of the Snows, but that was a little bit like passing the collection basket along the people in the front pew. The royals dived for their wallets and saved the event.
Ice sculptors are not necessarily loaded. They come in from the north woods with frost on their beards. Actually, I don’t know where they come from, but M.A. Soucheray writes that sculpted ice is the Harry Winston/Tiffany/Hope Diamond/Steuben Glass/Waterford of Winter Carnival attractions, by which I believe she was referring to the way the ice glitters and shimmers, even as it has melted during the past few events.
For $122 you can buy a block of ice from the St. Paul Festival & Heritage Foundation. The “stock in a block” program commemorates the 122nd year of the carnival. For the money you get a certificate, a chance to march in a parade and the knowledge that five bucks of the amount goes to the Dorothy Day Center.
Sales have been sluggish. The carnival starts Jan 23. Time is a-wasting.
It was the parade incentive that inspired M.A. Soucheray to not only buy a block of ice but offer the wise reminder that, well, clans could buy blocks of ice and march in the parade, similar to the way clans round themselves up for the St. Patrick’s Day parade. M.A. e-mailed everybody in her clan, many of whom are tightfisted, including me, but I said I would go in for a block.
Now, when I called Kate Kelly, president of the Festival & Heritage Foundation, I expected that there would be bureaucratic hurdles, but I have amazing news. No hurdles! Let’s say you are the Peterson clan, or the Lee clan, or whatever clan, and you number 12. Your clan can march in the parade for one block of ice. Obviously, a couple of purchased blocks would be better appreciated, but Kelly likes the idea of families marching in the parade.
“Let’s get crazy,” Kelly said. “Find out if you still fit in your old high school or college marching band uniform.”
(Was I hearing this correctly?)
“I want to see the largest streaming of St. Paulites we can assemble,” Kelly said.
She said the Grande Day Parade has 85 units. The Torchlight Parade has 70 units. Kelly would favor a larger Grande Day Parade. She seemed to making up the rules as we talked.
Here’s how it works, as of this moment. Get your clan. Count your clan. Figure out how many ice blocks your clan can purchase. Purchase the blocks through the Web site, winter-carnival.com, or call Kelly direct at 651-223-7401. The carnival will need the names of all clan members, presumably for the purpose of lining up the clans.
And then march to your heart’s content. Dig up old marching coats, or invent your own. Plaster the coats with new buttons and old. Sing a marching song. Create a banner. It really does sound like anything goes, not only to raise the money for the ice and snow events in Rice Park, but to bolster the parades, to lengthen them, to return them to the families whose memories might be fading of when Grande Day Parades were all-afternoon affairs and a command performance if you were born to the snow and ice.
As of Tuesday morning, 338 blocks of ice were sold. The goal is a thousand. Even I can do the math. That leaves 662 blocks to be purchased. That’s a lot of clans. I think the archives would show that the Grande Day Parade in 1958, on the occasion of the state’s 100th birthday, started at least as far away as the Cathedral – maybe it was back at Dale – and marched back downtown and through the auditorium.
Any clans up for that on the 150th birthday?
Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5474. Soucheray is heard from 2 to 5:30 p.m. weekdays on KSTP AM 1500.
Copyright 2008 Pioneer Press.
