Maine: Can We Just Get Over The Ice Disks Already?
Really, I think the headline says it all. Sure, last year when it was spinning in the Presumpscot River down in Westbrook, it was totally cool. For a while anyway. And then it was just everywhere. Like a song that you can't get out of your head. It was one of 2019's most buzzworthy news items, nationwide.
But here we are, a year later, and now everyone on Facebook, every news agency, etc. is trying to get the drop on the latest ice disk. And it's becoming too much. You cannot go anywhere on Facebook right now without someone saying here a disk, there a disk, everywhere a disk disk. It's outta hand.
Especially since we know they form under fairly mundane circumstances. It's a block of ice that gets trapped in a circular flow, and the spinning causes the edges to grind down. That's it. No magic. No trickery. Just boring old nature doing it's thing to a big chunk of ice in a river. It's probably happened many times before, and no one noticed.
But for some reason, when one cool thing happens, social media has to beat it to death. That's why in 2020 I'll be boycotting ice disks. You can upload your photos, link out to news stories, whatever you want. I'm moving onto to other things. Instead of checking out the winter equivalent of cat videos, I'm gonna watch the sun set.
When nature can find a way to make cooler shapes in rivers out of ice, gimme a call. If you find an ice rhombus, or ice parallelogram, or a triceangle, let me know. Until then, who cares?