Surprising, Considering the Source

You can’t blame gravity for falling in love.

--Albert Einstein

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.  Then quit.  There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.

--W. C. Fields

I’m sorry, if you were right, I’d agree with you.

--Robin Williams

Leaving the Grocery Store

She’s the product of five million parents

slamming doors on their own children.

You watch her strutting away in a gunmetal dress.

Eyes blue as a crying baby.

You can learn a lot from one glance

and her refusal to thank you for offering your empty cart.

Inside her is a magpie with a severed tongue

trapped inside a rusty cage.

--Mitchell Hegman

Best and Worst

The best idea is to sit back and listen instead of reacting immediately.  This rule is true until such time as sitting back and listening before reacting is the worst idea.

--Mitchell Hegman

John Smith, Are You Listening?

According to the website HowManyOfME.com, which is based on U.S. Census Bureau statistics, 49,905 John Smiths live here in the United States.

Statistically, John is the 2^nd most popular first name for men.  Nearly 5½ million people carry that name.  Some 99.63 percent of those given the name John are men.  If you do the math, this means that 0.37 percent of those named John are something other than male.

What are they, exactly?

The website is not clear on that, but I have my suspicions.

The name Smith is the commonest in the United States.  There are 2,857,461 Smiths among us.  Not surprisingly, I know a few of them.  I don’t, however, know any of the John Smiths.  Another interesting thing is that no John Smiths were registered among the list of famous people with the last name of Smith.  I do recall a certain John Smith being saved by Pocahontas.  Apparently, the folks compiling the figures thought Pocahontas should be the headliner on that.

So, John, if you are listening, you need to step up your game.

--Mitchell Hegman

Forty Years

Yesterday, during one of those random moments of thought that often occur to me, I realized this summer marks forty years since I first started my electrician’s apprenticeship.  I have been involved in the electrical industry, in one fashion or another, for forty years.  I guess, more than anything, I would like to apologize to the electrical industry for that.  I meant no harm.  

--Mitchell Hegman

Figure of Speech

Apparently, when someone suggests you should “take a stab” at something they are only using a figure of speech and not being literal.

Lesson learned.

--Mitchell Hegman

Musical Memory: The Coca-Cola Kid

I am permanently stuck with being me.  Given that fact, I have learned to accept all my failings and quirks.  In a previous blog, I mentioned that one of my quirks is the odd way in which my memory is selective.  For whatever reason, memories associated with music really stand out and persist in my mind; whereas, everything else runs around in circles for a while before eventually jumping off a cliff and vanishing forever.  I could go on forever citing examples of my “musical memories.”

For today, I shall share just one story.

In 1985, an Australian movie called The Coca-Cola Kid was released.  I didn’t actually watch the movie until I rented it (VCR-style) in 1988 or so.  The move was mama huhu.  Mama huhu is how you say “just so-so” in Mandarin Chinese.  Somehow (without the help of music), I manage to recall that phrase from a trip I took to China back in 1985 with my buddy, Kevin.

Anyhow, the movie starred Eric Roberts, the brother of Julia Roberts.  In the movie, the character played by Eric Roberts is a hotshot American marketing expert who is sent to Australia to figure out why one little town there is utterly resisting Coca-Cola products.  At one point in the movie, Eric asks a group of Australian musicians to produce a “local” jingle for Coca-Cola.

That’s where my memory steps in.

Though the song is brief, I liked it so much, I never forgot the distinct sound.  When YouTube first became known to me, I looked for the song, without luck.  Recently, however, I found it.

Today, I am posting a video showing the making of the jingle to The Coca-Cola Kid.  You are welcome to run the jingle off the cliff after a listen.

--Mitchell Hegman

Here is a link for the video if the video posted here fails to launch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEVhX0EZh9w

Murder

By all appearances, it seems North Korea’s unstable ruler, Kim Jong Un, had his half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, killed.

Kim Jong Nam was, at one time, the favored child and was set to rise to supremacy in North Korea.  Sadly, he abruptly fell out of favor in 2001 when he tried to sneak out of North Korea to visit Tokyo Disneyland.  He was exiled from North Korea a few years after that and has been living in exile ever since.

On February 13, Kim Jong Nam was approached by two women while navigating through a busy airport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.  One woman accosted Kim Jong Nam from the front and distracted him.  The second woman approached from behind and then reached around to hold a rag soaked in a yet unknown substance over his mouth, nose, and eyes.  After only three seconds the women fled.

Kim Jong Nam fell into distress immediately.  Fanning his hands at his face, he sought out airport officials.  The officials led Kim Jong Nam to an airport clinic.  Once there, he collapsed to the floor.  Within a few hours of his arrival to the airport he was dead.

Yesterday, several news programs aired airport security camera footage of the attack.  They also showed clips of his arrival and eventual collapse at the clinic.

The video of this murder particularly disturbed me.  A man simply walking through the airport.  Nobody notices as the two women approach.  Nobody notices when they leave.  A confused man wanders around with thousands of other confused travelers.  He has no idea he is about to be dead.

Cold.

I woke after sleeping partway through last night and started thinking about the murder again.  As I lay there, cycling the video images of this murder in my mind, 20 pounds of housecat suddenly jumped onto my chest from nowhere.  I didn’t totally freak-out, but I froze there for a second, wondering if I had reached the end of days.

The cat soon took to purring and kneading.  I eventually drifted off into another nightmare where a plane fell from the sky and crashed right beside me. 

That, I can handle.

--Mitchell Hegman

Keith Richards

As far as I know, Keith Richards, the hard-driving guitarist for the Rolling Stones, is the closest thing we have to the walking dead.  He has lived a wild life.   He is famous for drug and alcohol abuse.

There have been close calls for Keith.  There was that time he was knocked unconscious by a blue electric flash and nearly electrocuted when he used his guitar to smack a microphone stand while onstage in Sacramento.  Another time, while staying in the south of France, his bed caught on fire.  Following that, his Redland Estates caught fire.  In both cases, it seems Keith Richards started the fires by passing out with lit cigarettes in hand.

Keith Richards survived strychnine poisoning in Switzerland.  That time, somebody apparently laced his dope with the poison.

Keith fell from a palm tree in Fiji.  That accident required brain surgery to repair him.  I also believe that is the accident that convinced him to stop using either cocaine or heroin.  Quitting at least one of those seemed prudent at the time.

You may recall the time when pop star Justin Bieber (age 20) and Keith Richards (age 71) nearly got in a fist fight at a resort in the Turks and Caicos Islands.  An actual fight might have been like matter meeting antimatter.  The end of all as we know it.

We are lucky to still have Keith Richards around.  He created some of the most distinctive and alluring guitar riffs of all time.  The riff for Satisfaction is unshakeable once you have heard it.

I started this blog with all intentions of telling how Keith Richards took in his once estranged father and allowed his father to join the Rolling Stones entourage on their world-wide stage tours for the last twenty years of his father’s life.  I will now end with that.

According to Keith, his dad knew how to party.  The two became quite close.

Keith’s father was cremated upon his death.  Following that, Keith admits to having mixed some of his father’s ashes into cocaine and snorting the mix.  “It went down pretty well,” he once told an interviewer, “and I’m still alive.”

--Mitchell Hegman

Bonfire 3, Mitch 0

You can give yourself a haircut with a bonfire.  Not an attractive haircut, but a haircut nonetheless.  You can also get the rough equivalent of a sunburn from a bonfire.  Neither of these practices are what you might term an “exact science.”  As we might phrase it in East Helena, Montana: “This shit can get messy.”

Allow me to explain.

Yesterday, I drove to my cabin intending to set fire to a large pile of slash left from a half-dozen beetle-kill pine trees that were knocked down for firewood last summer.  With snow depths nearly up to my waist, I was forced to snowshoe in (read ‘repeatedly fall on my ass and face’ here).  Snowshoeing, for anyone unfamiliar, is an equivalent to swimming with bundles of bricks tied to your feet.

Once I arrived at the slash pile, I had to wipe away a fair amount of snow.  Wisely (read ‘unwisely’ here), I brought newspaper, engine starter fluid, and a lighter for starting the fire.

A quick note on that: engine starter fluid is somewhat explosive.

After stuffing crumpled newspapers into the pile of branches, I sprayed a generous amount of engine starter fluid into the mix, and then brought forth my lighter.

Wooooooooph!

Let’s just say that the fire burst to life with long arms and scissors and I was a bit closer than I should have been.  I got a quick, somewhat vicious, hair trim.

Fire: 1.

The wood was fairly damp, requiring me to do a lot of poking and prodding to keep flames alive.  For several hours, I danced around (read ‘flopped around in snowshoes’) the fire, keeping flames active.  Some incredible oven-like hot spots developed deep inside the pile.  My constant flirting with flames and heat left my face pink and my clothes covered with ash.

Fire: 2.

After burning throughout the middle part of the day, the fire lost ground as the pile of wood shrank down into the deep snow surrounding it.  Not wanting to leave the fire smoldering and smoking unattended, I scooped up armfuls of snow and packed them into the pile of wood, smothering the fire.  I did this for the better part of an hour.  By the end of that, I was wet and utterly exhausted.

Fire: 3.

This morning, as I write this, my entire body is sore from all of my wading around in the deep snow.  I enjoy the feel of that, actually.  Nothing better than getting your butt kicked by a bonfire at the end of winter.

--Mitchell Hegman

Argument: My Apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The couple having damaged each other beyond hope of repair, they sunk into dark silence, like two ships that did not quite manage to pass in the night.

--Mitchell Hegman

A Story of Giving

Mike Ilitch founded Little Caesar’s Pizza in 1959.  Through hard work and savvy business acumen, he grew the business and became a billionaire.  Mike used some of his earnings to purchase the Detroit Tigers baseball franchise and the Detroit Redwings hockey team.  While under his ownership, the Redwings won four Stanly Cups.

The expenditures on sport teams were, obviously, of a public nature.  Mike owned a big, beautiful home.  He lived well.  But Mike also engaged in secret expenditures.

Perhaps you recall Rosa Parks.  Rosa achieved fame in the dubious manner of allowing herself to get arrested in 1955 for not giving up her seat for a white passenger on the public bus she was riding in Montgomery, Alabama.  Such an event seems unthinkable now; but back then, she, a “person of color,” was mandated to stand at the back of the bus and leave the front half open for whites.

Rosa could not comprehend why she should give up her seat simply because of her skin color.  She is widely credited with sparking the civil rights movement that eventually swept through the entire nation in the 1960s.

Back in 1994, Rosa, at the age of 81, was robbed and assaulted in her Detroit home.   Mike Ilitch read a newspaper article about the robbery and assault.  The story distressed him in a way few stories distressed him.  Quietly, behind the headlines, Mike made contact with a mutual friend of Rosa Park’s.  He wanted to do something.

For the next decade, Mike Ilitch secretly paid the $2000.00 monthly rent for a safe apartment in which Rosa Parks could comfortably live.  She lived there until her death in 2005.  Mike paid her rent for the entire time.

Mike Ilitch died on February 10, 2017.  Only after his passing did full details about his efforts to help Rosa Parks surface.

--Mitchell Hegman

Picasso and Wright

Pablo Picasso, the famous abstract painter, and Frank Lloyd Wright, the famous architect, found themselves sitting next to each other on an airplane flying high over North Dakota.   Frank Lloyd Wright peered down at the flat land below them.  Studying the endless squares and rectangles of tended fields, all connected by a perfect grid of roads straight roads without turns, Frank Lloyd Wright said: “I like this landscape.  The flatness allows for clean and simple design.  Something like a blank sheet of paper.”

Pablo Picasso, sipping a mixed drink, allowed his eyes to trace a few square fields below the wings of the plane.  “Cubes and sharp angles,” Pablo Picasso said.  “At one time, I co-founded the cubist movement in painting.  That was something.  But I am beyond that now.  I like women these days.”

“Yes, I have heard that you like women,” Frank Lloyd Wright responded.  “Young women, I dare say.  Didn’t you also once say that women ‘are machines for suffering?’  And that there are only two kinds of women: goddesses and doormats?”

Pablo Picasso smiled.  “Hmmmm, that’s quite interesting.  Sounds clever to hear you say it.”

“Clever is not the word that comes to my mind.”  Frank Lloyd Wright said.  He reflected for a moment and then added: “If you find me on Wikipedia you’ll discover that my life is filled with women, scandal, and tragedy.  I learned to embrace that.”

“Yes, I am familiar with your story.  You abandoned a wife and six children so you could dash off to Europe with a lover.  Upon your return to America, she was murdered, by hatchet, along with six others and then burned inside your house.” 

Frank Lloyd Wright watched the squares and rectangles passing below, saddened.  After a while, he spoke again.  “We are similar, I suppose.”

Pablo Picasso drank deeply from his glass.  “No.  We are very different, friend.  As I said, I like women.  I believe you love them.”

--Mitchell Hegman

Famous Musicians and Singers Speak

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

--Kurt Cobain

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

--Frank Zappa

Don’t let the same dog bite you twice.

--Chuck Berry

When you’re drowning, you don’t say ‘I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me,’ you just scream.

--John Lennon

Life is like Sanskrit read to a pony.

--Lou Reed

The focus on my appearance has really surprised me.  I’ve always been a size 14 to 16.   I don’t care about my clothes, I’d rather spend my money on cigarettes and booze.

--Adele

First Hours (Tabula Rasa)

The first hours of each day lie between this world and the next.  All roads yet swallowed by darkness beyond the last streetlight.  The nearest planets and the bluest stars fading against the chill slate of sky.

News flows purple from my television.  I switch feeds.  The talking heads change, but the words remain the same.

Out there somewhere, the ghosts of Michael Jackson and David Bowie are dancing across clouds that will blossom to light only when the dancers disappear.

The white horse is not yet standing at the fence by the road where newspapers are delivered to our mailboxes.

I poke my smarter-than-me-phone to life.  Unread text messages blossom like marigolds in a flowerbox.  Other events ping to populate chains of communication in the background.  The old and the new.

I switch to another television feed.  An old black and white rapidly swarms into a solid image.  The hair styles and the clothing odd.  The automobiles cartoonish.  Every movie star on the screen having now been gone for decades…and, yet, there they are back before me again.

--Mitchell Hegman

Naked Men

Difficult as this might be to fathom, there is a “chronic shortage” of naked men in the United Kingdom.  In London, at the very least.  When I first saw a headline proclaiming a shortage of naked men in the Mirror, I got somewhat excited.

I can do naked! 

Finally, a place that really needs me!

My excitement waned quickly as I read deeper into the article.   Apparently, the required naked men must be good-looking, muscle-bound, and younger than me.  The shortage is actually specific to a company called Butlers with Buns—a provider of male strippers.

So serious is the shortage of buff men willing to wiggle around naked at parties and other social gatherings, Butlers and Buns issued a broad public appeal in hopes of finding men.

My only hope is that the shortage eventually ripples across the pond and reaches up or down to my demographic, depending upon your perspective.  For the sake of decorum, I will spare you any descriptions of my exact demographic.  

--Mitchell Hegman

Don’t (Four)

Don’t brush aside a bluebird sky to get where you are going.

Don’t forget to thank those who criticize you in a constructive manner.

Don’t August if you can September.

Don’t turn down the music when someone is dancing.

--Mitchell Hegman

An Island in the Snow

Previously, I wrote about how my 40 pounds of housecat (2 cats x 20 pounds ea. = 40 pounds) have been distressed because cold weather kept them indoors for the last two months.  The cold snap finally broke two days ago.  Warmer temperatures and rain began to carve away at the snow around my house. 

The snow at my back deck averaged two feet in depth before the warming spell.  By midmorning yesterday, several tufts of grass appeared a few feet off the edge of my deck—looking like fuzzy islands in a sea of white.

Splash, the crankiest of my cats, finally stepped outside early yesterday afternoon.  After sniffing at the deck here and there, he noticed an island of grass out in the snow.  He stepped down onto the snow, gingerly walked across the melting surface, and then sat there on the island of grass looking around.  He remained there for quite some time.   

He’ll take spring...no matter what size it is.

--Mitchell Hegman

Darkness

My mother was seldom funny.  Sure, she had a sense of humor.  She laughed at jokes and funny incidents.  But she never shared jokes or light stories.  When we were kids, Mother painted her bedroom black, hung heavy curtains over the windows, and closed the door.

I recall stepping into the bedroom one day.  I scanned the dark walls, finding only a knife-blade of light where the curtains remained slightly parted at the middle.  Rather than feeling drawn to the light, I felt the darkness sucking at me.

Not long after that, we ended up living with my grandparents.

I didn’t understand the darkness then.

I don’t understand it now.

--Mitchell Hegman

Nostalgia

If you are like me, there is a certain nostalgia in working on a project for an entire day only to realize, at the end of the day, you have screwed up entirely and will need to spend the entire day following undoing what you have done.

--Mitchell Hegman

How to Identify a Grizzly Bear

Montana has plenty of black bears.  We also support the highest density of grizzly bears in the lower 48 states.  For that reason, anyone hiking in the backcountry around here should learn to tell the difference between the two bears.  It’s fairly simple.   If you bump into a bear and the bear starts chewing off your arm, it’s a grizzly.

--Mitchell Hegman

40 Pounds of Detesting Winter

This winter has been a tough one here in our corner of Montana.  The only winter I recall having such long-term cold and constant snow cover on the ground was the winter of 1978-1979.  Fortunately, that year I was working on an electrical upgrade inside a retirement home and was plenty warm.  Also, a strikingly beautiful Native American girl worked there.  She didn’t talk much, but she was extremely graceful.  She made washing dishes and prepping food seem like a presentation of Swan Lake set in rows of stainless steel racks.  I enjoyed the show.

But this is about my 40 pounds of housecats.

Neither of my 40 pounds of housecat have any reference to the winter of 1978-1979.  My cats detest snow and they do not appreciate temperatures below freezing.  Stuck inside the house, both cats have become disheartened and more than a little touchy over the last couple of months.

Splash is especially dejected.  Each morning, on my way to pouring my second cup of coffee, we meet at the back door for the same grim ritual.  The idea is to see if he can go outside.  Sitting by the door, Splash waits for me to swing it open so he can make an assessment of the weather conditions.  After I open the door, he takes a couple steps and pokes his head out.   He has a checklist:

Snow out there?

Yep.

Temperature cold on my whiskers?

Yep.

Wind?

Yep.

That stuff is not for me.

With that, he slowly slinks back, smoldering on the inside, and finds a warm spot to sleep.  If Carmel happens to walk near him before he falls to sleep, Splash will ambush him just because he can.

Yesterday, believe it or not, I heard a robin chipping out its song in the snowscape behind my house.  I wish my cats had heard that, I’m sure that would make them feel better. 

--Mitchell Hegman

To Catch a Spider

A weird paradox is that using a backfire is sometimes the best way to fight a fire.  Similarly, poison is sometimes needed to fight poison.  The venom from rattlesnakes, for example, is required to produce the antivenom for protection from a rattlesnake bite.  To produce the antivenom, domestic animals are injected with small doses of venom.  These small doses cause the animals to produce antibodies which are then harvested and used to fight off the poison in humans.

This same process can be employed to produce antidote for poisonous spiders.

First of all, you would think just being creepy-looking is enough for spiders.  But this is not so.  A bunch of them are also capable of dispensing a poisonous bite to humans.

Now, let’s talk about Australia.  Australia is “The Land Down Under” for good reason.  That reason is because they have a bunch of really creepy spiders and snakes and we need to keep that shit below us.

The other day, I chanced upon a Reuter’s article about a zookeeper at The Australian Reptile Park who is urging the public to go out and catch deadly funnel-web spiders.  The folks at the park have not been able to catch enough spiders and need more spiders.  The park is the country’s sole provider of funnel-web venom for the production of funnel-web spider antidote.  The antidote is actually derived in other facilities from rabbit plasma.   A recent spate of spider bites has left the supply dangerously low.

The funnel-web spiders near Sidney are the dangerous ones.  These spiders are endowed with conspicuously large fangs.  The bites are painful and can (reportedly) cause death within an hour if left untreated.

So far as catching the spiders, a fellow named Tim Faulkner, speaking on behalf of the park, noted: “With an appropriate jar and a wooden spoon, you can flick the spider into the jar easily.”

Really?  A jar, a wooden spoon, and a live venomous spider?  Is that the best you can do, Down Under?

--Mitchell Hegman

The Hole

Five men unexpectedly came upon a hole in the earth while hiking through the forest.  The hole was perfectly round and too wide for a man to leap across.  The men gathered at the edge of the hole and peered down.

Nothing but darkness.

“We should throw something down the hole,” someone suggested.

The men gathered some nearby rocks and sticks. One of the men dropped a rock inside the hole.  The men listened and listened and listened.  No sound ascended from the hole.  The hole seemed without bottom.

Another man threw a stick into the hole.  The stick whistled while falling—almost crying—and the men stood quietly as the crying stick quickly faded into silence.

“What should we do now?” asked a man.

“I don’t know?” said another.

“We should continue hiking,” suggested yet another.  “It’s just a hole we must go around.”

“How can we leave this hole?” asked a fourth man.  “Why is it here?  How did it come to be?  We must learn from the hole.  Where is the bottom?  What can be found there?”

All five men remained standing alongside the hole.  The man who suggested they should stay there soon walked close to the rim of the hole and stared down into the void.  “Knowing is everything,” he said.  Having said that, he took a final step and dropped into oblivion without a sound.

After a while, four men walked away from the hole they had come across in the forest floor.  Finally, they knew how men disappeared in the forest.

--Mitchell Hegman

Home

I woke feeling a little “bluesy” this morning.   After pouring a cup of coffee, I sat down at my computer and played through a few songs.  I have posted a video of the song that felt closest to my mood.

--Mitchell Hegman

My Weather App

My smarter-than-me-phone weather app is somewhat finicky.  Sometimes, the app immediately brings forth the temperature—displaying the number against a cloud or pasted onto a pastoral image of some sort.  Sometimes, the app just sits there, blank as a foggy day.  On occasion, the temperature for some other random city I have recently visited pops up.

I never know what I am going to reap when I poke the app.

Today, the app did the most annoying thing: it immediately populated an accurate reading of minus 11°F here in the valley.

Seriously?

Can we melt some snow here already?

--Mitchell Hegman

Emily

I met Emily at a birthday party over the weekend.  Emily is six or seven.  The party was for her grandfather.  What struck me about Emily was, frankly, everything.

Emily was fluffed into a lacey dress.  Her well-tended hair framed a near constant smile.  You could tell that Emily liked talking to adults.

Early in the party, someone gave Emily a dollar bill.

That started something.

Pretty soon, everyone at the party who had a dollar bill gave one to Emily when they bumped into her.  I stopped to visit with Emily at one point and asked, “So, why is everyone giving you money?”

She brightened noticeably, flung her hands out wide, and said, “I don’t know!  I just walk around…and people give me money!”

After that, I sat and listened as Emily talked to a couple of nearby women.  Emily was quite well-spoken and used her words handsomely.  I later had a chance to visit with Emily’s mother.  “Did you read to Emily a lot when she was a small girl?” I asked.

“Oh, yes.” He mother responded.  “Emily loves books.  She loves stories.”

“I thought so,” I said.  “You can tell just by listening to her that you read to her.  She is sharp.  I am impressed.”

Later, when I came back home and considered the party, I realized that what I saw at the party was a young girl whose life is quite neatly organized in front of her.  She has a loving and caring family.  Concerned grandparents.  A stable home life.  Emily is surrounded by people who love her, by people who care.

I have seen other children.  Haunted children.  Filthy children shoved from the doors of broken homes.  Children whose parents scream down on them.  Children who don’t talk.

Emily is not one of those.

If you chance to see Emily, give her a dollar.  She is going places and she is a good investment in our future.

--Mitchell Hegman

About Snow

Here are some interesting details:

—Theoretically, under proper conditions, snow can occur at temperatures up to 46°F.

—Montana’s 24-hour record for snowfall accumulation is 48 inches (Shonkin, May 29, 1982 & Milligan, December 27, 2003).  Florida’s 24-hour record for snowfall is 4 inches (Milton, March 6, 1954).  Colorado tops the record for the lower 48 states with a record 24-hour depth of 75.8 inches (Silver Lake, April 14, 1921).

—In 1988, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research found two identical snow crystals.

—Researchers have identified some 35 “types” of snowflakes.

—The largest snowflake ever observed fell at Fort Keogh, Montana (near Miles City) in January of 1887.  The snowflake measured 15 inches across.  Witnesses reported snowflakes “larger than milk pans” falling from the sky at Fort Keogh when the record snowflake fell.

—Snow can be comprised of up to 95 percent trapped air and is, therefore, a great insulator.  An igloo can be more than 100 degrees warmer on the inside than the on outside.

--Mitchell Hegman

Sources: Weather.com, mentalfloss, weatherquestions.com