Ice Worms in Culture
Scottish-born Canadian poet of the Yukon Robert W. Service wrote the poem, The Ballad of the Ice-worm Cocktail, in which a fake ice worm made of spaghetti is the subject of a bar bet. This may have contributed to the impression that ice worms are mythical creature. There is a different song of the same name by Canadian artist Jenny Omnichord, which is highly factually accurate. Organisms similar to ice worms have appeared in science fiction in the short story Glacial by Alastair Reynolds and the novel Fallen Dragon by Peter F. Hamilton. In the annual February Ice Worm Festival of Cordova, Alaska, a long imitation ice worm is paraded through the streets like a Chinese new year dragon dance.
Read more about this topic: Ice Worm
Famous quotes containing the words ice, worms and/or culture:
““The room’s very hot, with all this crowd,” the Professor said to Sylvie. “I wonder why they don’t put some lumps of ice in the grate? You fill it with lumps of coal in the winter, you know, and you sit round it and enjoy the warmth. How jolly it would be to fill it now with lumps of ice, and sit round it and enjoy the coolth!””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long preserved virginity:
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust:
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.”
—Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)
“When we want culture more than potatoes, and illumination more than sugar-plums, then the great resources of a world are taxed and drawn out, and the result, or staple production, is, not slaves, nor operatives, but men,—those rare fruits called heroes, saints, poets, philosophers, and redeemers.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)