LSSU to welcome spring with 38th annual Snowman BurningPosted: March 18th, 2008Can't make it to the 38th annual Snowman Burning? You can listen to a live interview at 7:40 a.m. on Thursday, March 20, with Dick Purtan's People on WOMC 104.3 FM in Detroit WOMC FM or watch it on TV 9/10 and Fox 33 Cadillac during the Michigan This Morning program starting at 6:30 a.m. on Friday, March 21.
SAULT STE. MARIE, Mich. – Judging from the attitudes of the people in the region, from youngsters to adults, spring can't come soon enough to the Eastern Upper Peninsula and Northern Ontario. Lake Superior State University will do what it can to help usher in the season with its 38th annual snowman burning this week.
LSSU will put the fire to the snowman's feet at noon on Thursday, March 20, in front of the Walker Cisler Student and Conference Center. Spring will have arrived several hours earlier, at 2:04 a.m. EDT.
This year's event features hot dogs grilled by LSSU Student Government, poetry written by fourth-graders at Washington Elementary School and plenty of daffodils from the Sault's Co-ed Flowers ordered in advance of the flowers that have yet to push through the 18 inches of snow still blanketing the region. The center of the event is a paper snowman constructed by the LSSU Physical Plant crew and Student Government.
Former LSSU Public Relations Director Bill Rabe adapted snowman burning at the university in 1971 after finding a similar ceremony in Weinheim-en-der-Bergstrasse, Germany. The annual event to welcome spring is always popular in the Eastern U.P. and northern Ontario, although attendance varies with the weather. Thursday's forecast looks more like winter than spring, with a temperature in the upper 20s and a brisk northwest wind.
Poetry has been a part of the ceremony since the beginning, although fewer poets have been willing to read their work at the microphone in recent years. This year, students from Patricia Olsen's fourth grade class at Washington School wrote poetry about the coming of spring. The best of the poems will be read at the ceremony. A quick read of the poems submitted shows that the young poets agree with most of the region's residents, who think that spring is too slow in coming.
Fourth-grader Eric VanVallis writes:
"No more slush.
No more mush.
No more coldness.
No more jackets.
No more boots,
and Especially, no more high heating bills."
While the snowman burns, members of Student Government will have hot dogs, pop and hot chocolate for the enjoyment of warm-weather-worshipers.
The public is always welcome to join the students at the snowman burning. Parking is available on the north side of the Cisler Center.
For more information on the event's history, go here. –LSSU-
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