I walk through my blindness the way I saunter down streets in Paris: unfettered and alive, ever delighted by the raw material of the senses. Come along with me. Just don’t try to take my arm unless I ask. What’s a flaneur? Read the first post, ![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
"Brendan, this is what the world looks like all the time to me. Just a little fog. It’s a fine day for boating on the Great Lakes.” Without missing a stroke he turned to dart a skeptical glance at me. Brendan the Navigator. When we named him I didn’t tell his mother everything the legendary Irish name implied. But I imagined him taking on the role of navigator for me. Growing up with Coastal Survey charts and tales of Great Lakes shipwrecks, he came to know Superior as another home. He never doubted the wisdom of canoeing there with a father who was half blind. 
If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in 
![Charlotte Casiraghi in a red dress. [Source: Stylophile]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/02/charlotte_casiraghi_red_dress.jpg "Charlotte Casiraghi in a red dress. [Source: Stylophile]")
When I figured out who Charlotte Casiraghi was, I realized that I once sent a poem to her mother. 
Poet and street artist Miss Tic isn't exactly a kid in a hoodie with a can of spray paint. Maybe she can still run like hell when the police show up, but can she sprint in high heels? Well-known in international avant-garde circles, her work is exhibited now at the Venice Biennale as well as the alleys of Paris. ![Eugène Delacroix. Liberty Leading the People. 1830. Louvre, Paris. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/05/delacroix_liberty_1830_2.jpg "Eugène Delacroix. Liberty Leading the People. 1830. Louvre, Paris. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]]")
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January 28, 2023 at 10:06am
by Mark Willis
Ordained minister Edson Forrester presides over the Paradise, Michigan ’s annual snowmobile blessing . Edson burns cedar and tobacco, then spreads smoke over each vehicle, saying, “Creator, protect this snowmobile on its travels.” This year, people in Paradise say they’re adding an extra prayer for a better economy next year — and more snowmobilers. [Photo by David Green/NPR]
I’ll admit it. Like school children everywhere who hope for a serendipitous day off, I’ve prayed for snow. It takes a lot of prayers (and snow), to close a university, mad this morning our prayers were answered.
I never prayed for snowmobiles, and never will. That’s what they do every winter in Paradise, Michigan. The town’s name makes sense on a sunny day in August when you look east across Lake Superior’s vast Whitefish Bay, but Paradise can look pretty bleak in winter unless you’re charmed by Arctic grandeur. I pass through Paradise almost every day in my mind, and I keep on going north to Whitefish Point, a truly awesome, numinous place in any season. In my mind I hear the roar of twelve-foot breakers piling brash ice and bergy bits on a lonely shore. I don’t hear snowmobiles.
Nonetheless, snow machines are numinous for some in Paradise.
David Green told the story this morning on NPR:
… on this day, the diehard snowmobilers have come — to a snowy field on the edge of town, for the annual snowmobile blessing. Looking like astronauts in their thick snowsuits and helmets, they’re gathered around a fire. Remember that bit about snowmobiling being like a religion?
“Creator of the heaven and the Earth, give blessing to these snowmobilers,” says ordained minister Edson Forrester, who is in charge of the annual blessing. “God, we ask for your guiding light when blizzards leave us blind, when accidents leave us alone in the dark.”
… Before they head out, the minister holds smoking bunches of cedar and tobacco up to each of their snowmobiles. Tobacco, the minister says, is known to carry prayers up to God.
“Creator, protect this snowmobile on its travels. Give it safe passage so it can find its way home,” he says.
For the record, even though I abjure the noise pollution of most internal combustion machines, the sound of dump trucks hauling gravel to Paradise saved me once when lost in the fog on Whitefish Bay.
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