Not that the Olympics are getting a lot of snow at the moment. One area of North America which is getting slammed with snow is the Washington, DC area. Last year, Pres. Obama gently mocked the East Coast's inability to handle snow as well as his hometown of Chicago. It seems the 44th president has changed his tune now, coining the phrase "snowmagedon." But it seems some residents of the metro area made something out of nothing, courtesy of Facebook. The Jerusalem Post reported on a massive snowball fight Ami Greener and Michael Lipin organized on Dupont Circle last week. Greener, an Israeli army veteran, worked with Lipin to organize the winter battle to take advantage of weather the pair didn't see much of as kids. Nearly 2000 people showed up after the snowball fight was announced via blogs, FB and other forms of social media. Called the largest snowball fight in Washington history, all missiles were aimed in good fun.
In other news out of Israel, archaeologists recently announced the find of a 1400 year-old, extremely large and unusually shaped wine press. Found in what was the center of an agrarian area, the 21x54 foot, octagonal wine press appears to have been used for producing wine for export. According to the Yahoo! article the archaeologists believe the technology employed by the sixth to seventh century wine press is more advanced than previously assumed.
And now for something completely different...Since feel-good stories pop up more often than usual during the Olympics, I will most probably put random Olympic happy thoughts in amongst otherwise unrelated themes for the duration of the Games. Today's one-off story is from the New York Times, detailing the men's moguls results. Alexandre Bilodeau won Canada's first gold medal at a home Olympics with his inspired last run. Fast, aesthetically pleasing and technically perfect, Bilodeau beat turncoat countryman Dale Begg-Smith to the top of the podium. Bilodeau said before the race he was dedicating his efforts to his older brother Frederic, who has cerebral palsy (CP).
(Photo courtesy of the Jerusalem Post)
2 comments:
I saw the feature on Alexandre while watching the medal presentation last night for men's moguls. Such a good story! I loved the interviews with his brother, and how Alexandre gave up skating and playing hockey for skiing so that his brother could participate!
And yes, he is VERY aesthetically pleasing! Ha ha.
Ha, Jen, re-reading that I realized it does look like I was talking about his looks, but when I said aesthetically pleasing, I meant his run down the mountain! :)
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