#ice cutting

[gummi-stims]

Epic Cold Wubbox stimboard!

Only one Epic Wubbox variant board to go. :) (Unless I do Gold Island's as well, I guess)

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🧊-🎶-🧊

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[amorphousbl0b]

Random worldbuilding tidbit I think people should use more: ICE HARVESTING

Before refrigeration, the only way to keep food cold was to bring in ice from elsewhere, making it an absolutely thriving trade, especially in the 19th century when insulation and ships had improved enough to transport it far away. Blocks of it would be shipped in, brought down from mountains, or harvested from local waters in winter and stored in icehouses for distribution in spring, summer, and autumn.

In your pre-modern worlds, where do people get their ice? Wizards able to freeze water might have a job selling it during the warm seasons. Gathering ice was also a winter task for many farmers, so consider incorporating that into your characters’ daily lives. If there’s no way to get ice — in regions that don’t freeze in the winter or are too far away from the poles for easy trade, or in worlds without insulation technology — how do people preserve their food?

And don’t think I forgot about science fiction, because space ice miners are a concept that’s been stuck in my head for YEARS. Asteroids colonies, space stations, terraforming projects, arid planets, and other settlements with little to no natural water will all require a reliable supply thereof. And if your setting has nuclear fusion or hydrogen fuel, more water is always appreciated for electrolysis. The great thing is that ice is pretty abundant in space. From pioneering terraformers cracking the poles of Mars to frontier Oort-hoppers wrangling comets at the outer reaches of the solar system to interstellar operations stripping planets of their rings and stars of their asteroid belts, there’s room for ice mining in every space setting.

Aside from worldbuilding, the profession itself would make for some excellent stories, no matter what setting. Ice cutting is a dangerous job, wherein the very ground you stand on is liable to break up and plunge you into freezing doom if your cuts are not precise. It would be no simpler in space, contending with all the perils of zero-G. Backgrounds could be diverse, from farmers simply providing for their own families to fully professional ice harvesters and sellers.

If nothing else, it’ll provide an excuse to reference the best song from Frozen.

[vintage-ukraine]

Ice Cutting on the Dnieper by Serhiy Svitoslavsky, 1900s

[mariasmemo]

The Ice Man Cometh

This is a blog of the past.  I did post it long ago when I wrote for “Nantucket Chronicle” and have posted it on this blog. But with winter upon us, I decided it was time to think about ice harvesting again.

The past few weeks have been very un-Nantucket as far as the heat and the extreme humidity.  When I was a child and even a teenager, I remember that we always wore long pants and even sweaters in the summer evenings on island.  This does not seem to be the norm any longer unfortunately.  The heat also leads me to think about staying cool and what generations before us did to preserve food. 

Long before modern refrigeration, ice was used for preserving foods. Although the use of ice brought an end to salting and drying fish for local markets, with railroad development and western expansion in the 1850s, salt fish was still being shipped to inland domestic markets as well as abroad. As the fishing industry grew on Nantucket and elsewhere, however, so did the need for ice to keep the catch fresh for market.

On Nantucket, when a hard freeze produced ice of the necessary thickness, blocks were cut from Maxcey’s and Washing Ponds and the North Head of Hummock Pond and stored in nearby icehouses. This was a fairly long and tricky process that took skill to make sure the ice was the right thickness and that one did not fall through the ice.  Mainland icehouses typically used sawdust for insulation, but Nantucket ice was insulated with beach grass, seaweed, and eelgrass—sawdust not being readily available here.  The iceman would drive his cart around the streets with usually a gaggle of children trailing behind – or hitching a secretive ride on the back of the cart – hoping for a piece of ice to suck on and cool off with – back when something that simple was a pure delicacy.

When electricity was introduced on Nantucket in 1889, cutting pond ice was no longer necessary.  Captain John “Jack” Killen built the first ice-making plant, on Straight Wharf, opening it on May 5, 1902.  Several other plants, including that of the Island Service Company, followed—all operating until the Great Depression.  Nantucket’s early ice-making plants were established primarily for packing fish and shellfish, which were shipped in barrels or fish boxes layered with ice. Fishermen both on and off-island would stock up on ice before going out on long trips, and it is said that island ice was of a much higher quality than that from plants off-island—perhaps because of the purity of Nantucket’s water.

Some people still cut ice.  My parents had an elderly friend, now gone, and his family owned – and I assume still owns – a camp of cottages from the 19th century up in New Hampshire.  In the winter, the entire family shows up to harvest ice and store it in the icehouse.  The ice is then used in each of the cottages during the summer since they have no electricity or plumbing.  It is an art that is almost gone but happily there are still a few who have passed down the knowledge and skill for harvesting ice.  I recently took a look at his obituary and was blown away – I remember him for ice harvesting – but wow what a life!  One of service and seeking justice.

JNLF

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

”ARMENIAN YOUTH GAVE BARRIE THRILL,” Kingston Whig-Standard. March 6, 1933. Page 3. --- Leaped Into Icy Waters of Bay, Clad Only in Tights ---- BARRIE, March 6 - Krikor Kekelman, 19-year-old Armenian youth, giving Hamilton as his address, gave Barrie a thrill today and incidentally earned the price of his dinner.

Clad only in a pair of tights, Hekelman leaped into the icy waters of Kempenfeldt Bay at a point where ice is being cut, and swam around for several moments. He then proceeded to do stunts on the surface of the ice field for half an hour. A collection was taken among bystanders for meal for the youth. 

Hekelman said he planned to enter the Canadian National Exhibition marathon swim this year. When he came to Canada from Armenia six years ago he could not stand the cold, he said.

[woosh-floosh-art]

Making up for not doing anything for the last splatfest with two (!) comics!

[fangrurin]

Fashion of the Great Houses of Westeros: House Tully of Riverrun

[ceilidho]

i know Ghost wouldn't necessarily enjoy chartering fishing expeditions for inexperienced tourists after living in Alaska for a couple years (but the local economy is built on tourism and even though he's saved up a considerable amount of money while in the military, it never hurts to have a little pocket change) and probably fantasizes about leaving a few of them to fend for themselves with the bears during salmon season, but he'd love the pretty thing staring at him all moon-eyed and flustered while he shows her how to bait her hook and cast a line. probably cancels on his other clients so it's only the two of them out on the water.

[al-luviec]

day 18 - sacrifice

[francy-sketches]

POV they caught you chasing cats in the red keep

[tsuchinokoroyale]

What’s there for a girl to do in Boston 🐟🏳️‍🌈

[quiddling]

the bastard of volantis and his mummy

[silliestballbreakerfourteen100]

I slept for 3 hour and had to color in 3 things, anyways dad Simon and Marcy!!

[canon-gabriel-quotes]

Transcript:

WHY AM I STUCK IN TRAFFIC?

DON'T THEY KNOW? DON'T THEY KNOW WHO I AM?

THE RIGHTEOUS HAND OF THE FATHER, THAT'S WHO I AM.

THIS IS BULLSHIT- Oh ice cream!

Audio source

[aphemera]

hotd s2 is really good if you don’t have an annoying book reader in your ear complaining about the changes

[llutik]

her firstborn

..so ugh you know how once there's been only cat and robb in her scary and not very promising newly married life... and how robb was her whole world

and how he really is her whole world in death???