MISCHKE: Winter

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Garage Logic — MISCHKE: Winter

Podcast: Garage Logic
Released by: Gamut Podcast Network
Episode: MISCHKE: Winter
Date: December 25, 2025
Host: Tommy Mischke

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Episode Overview

This special episode of Garage Logic, hosted by Tommy Mischke, is an evocative meditation on the meaning of winter for Minnesotans. It weaves nostalgic storytelling, cultural commentary, practical survival tips, literary references, and dry humor to paint a vivid portrait of “the most Minnesotan season.” Through personal anecdotes, interviews, and reflective monologues, Mischke explores how winter shapes identity, forges character, and fosters a unique sense of community—culminating in the Danish concept of Hygge, or cozy contentment.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Nostalgia and the Minnesota Winter Experience

• Mischke and an unnamed Minnesota storyteller reminisce about childhood winters: snow forts, borrowed mittens, and the constant tradeoff between mittens and gloves.
• Winter is characterized as not just a season but a recurring, almost familial presence:
  • “Winter is Mother, and we are home now as she busies herself with things we don’t always appreciate yet recognize as her sacred duties.” (07:01)
• The episode probes how leaving Minnesota changes a person’s relationship to winter and how staying fosters a deep, sometimes begrudging love for the cold season.

2. Cultural Humor and Ice Fishing

• Mischke discusses Minnesota’s peculiar pastime of ice fishing, quoting local writer DJ Tice to satirize its lack of “fun,” describing it as “an exotic rite of mortification.”
  • “The secret is, ice fishing has nothing whatsoever to do with fun. It is instead an exotic rite of mortification, preparing the ice fisher for life’s pangs, disappointments and tedium. It’s especially good for tedium.” —DJ Tice (12:54)
• Despite the jokes, the camaraderie and pure presence found on a frozen lake are celebrated for their simple, heartfelt pleasures.

3. The Elusive Fox: A Tale of Winter Foolishness

• Mischke recounts a particularly absurd attempt to spot a red fox, spent freezing beneath a sheet and playing “baby rabbit in pain” sounds on a cassette tape. The episode uses the story to highlight the quirky lengths Minnesotans go in pursuit of winter adventures.
  • “I sat there in the cold in a snow pile covered with a sheet like some freakin’ Klansman playing that squealing sound over and over again... before realizing this was the most absurd use of my time ever devised.” (17:40)

4. Winter Knowledge: Safety and Survival

• Listeners learn crucial Minnesotan winter wisdom:
  • Tire tread safety: “5/32 of an inch. The depth of tread you at least better have on those tires before driving on snow.” (19:05)
  • Ice survival rule (“1-10-1” from Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht):
    • 1 minute: Control your breathing after falling into icy water
    • 10 minutes: Effective limb movement before muscles fail
    • 1 hour: Time before hypothermia causes unconsciousness
    • “If you do ever fall into cold water, the main thing you need to think about for the first minute is just not drowning. You don't have to get out. You don't have to do anything else. Just get over that. Try and get your breathing under control.” —Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht (23:53)
• The dangers of thin ice, annual accidents, and the culture of braving the elements are discussed candidly and with gallows humor.

5. Weather Obsession and the Minnesota Weatherman

• The importance of meteorologists in Minnesota culture is dissected, featuring a nostalgic storm-chasing story and commentary about how “the weather guy was often the person leading the news.”
  • “Oh, to be a meteorologist in Minnesota, where the weatherman is a rock star.” (29:46)
  • “Everybody gets slammed by the weather at the same time. It’s there for all of us.” (32:33)
• Joe Thompson, a meteorologist, joins to discuss upcoming storms and the cultural significance of “snow emergencies.” (31:22)

6. Snow Emergencies and The Impound Lot Nightmare

• Routine winter experiences include the headache of getting towed for failing to move a car during a snow emergency, recounted with deadpan humor:
  • “First of all, the impound lot is in a part of the city that resembles a former Siberian Soviet military base.” (35:08)
  • A comic, surreal sequence imagines impound lot employees demanding tow victims to “do a little dance” to reclaim their car. (36:11–37:41)

7. Finding Hygge in a Minnesota Winter

• The concept of Hygge—Danish for cozy well-being—is introduced as the perfect antidote to winter’s harshness:
  • “Intimacy, coziness, a warmth, an internal sense of well being...the atmosphere and ambiance matching the mood. It’s how winter is not only tolerated, but embraced.” (44:59–46:23)
• Scenes of candlelight, wood stoves, and shared books are lovingly described.

8. Cold-Weather Survival Tales and the Power of Grit

• Mischke reads chilling (yet fascinating) survival stories from his personal bookshelf, including the legend of an Inuit craftsman making a knife from frozen feces (48:28) and explorer Douglas Mawson’s Arctic ordeal.
• The episode ends with Robert Service’s poem “The Quitter,” which Mawson recalled to inspire himself to survive:
  • “Just have one more try. It's dead easy to die. It's the keeping on living that's hard.” (51:28–end)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Winter’s Role:

  • “Winter gave birth to a part of who we are. Summer is the lighthearted uncle...But winter is Mother, and we are home now as she busies herself with things we don’t always appreciate yet recognize as her sacred duties.” —Tommy Mischke (06:50–07:11)

• Ice Fishing as Mortification:

  • “The secret is, ice fishing has nothing whatsoever to do with fun. It is instead an exotic rite of mortification, preparing the ice fisher for life’s pangs, disappointments and tedium.” —DJ Tice (12:54)

• On Ice Survival:

  • “If you do ever fall into cold water, the main thing you need to think about for the first minute is just not drowning…Just get over that. Try and get your breathing under control.” —Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht (23:53)

• On Minnesota’s Weather People:

  • “Oh, to be a meteorologist in Minnesota, where the weatherman is a rock star.” —Tommy Mischke (29:46)

• On Hygge:

  • “The mood and ambiance that comes with Hygge is always intimate and rich, warm and cozy, like curling up with a blanket and the best book you’ve read in months.” —Tommy Mischke (45:45–45:54)

• On Survival and Grit:

  • “Just have one more try. It's dead easy to die. It's the keeping on living that's hard.” —Robert Service, read by Minnesota Native/Storyteller (51:28)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Minnesota winter memories & identity: 02:16–08:52
• Ice fishing & northern camaraderie: 12:14–17:29
• Fox-hunting tale & tire wisdom: 17:29–21:51
• Ice survival (Dr. Giesbrecht interview): 23:50–26:29
• Severe weather & meteorologists as icons: 29:05–33:32
• Snow emergencies & the impound lot: 33:32–37:41
• Embracing Hygge (Danish coziness): 41:45–47:08
• Survival tales & the “Quitter” poem: 47:09–end

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Tone & Style

True to Garage Logic’s ethos, the episode is steeped in dry humor, regional pride, and fondness for common sense. Mischke’s delivery is conversational yet literary, mixing self-deprecating stories with poetic musings. The episode pivots fluidly from funny and earnest to philosophical and practical, always embracing the quirks of Midwestern winter life.

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Takeaways

• Winter is deeply embedded in Minnesotan identity—hard, humbling, comforting, and formative.
• Survival tips and community rituals (plowing, meteorologists, towing) form a shared language.
• Humorous self-awareness shapes tales of hardship and absurdity.
• Seek out moments of “Hygge”—cozy, mindful enjoyment—as an antidote to winter’s harshness.
• Grit, warmth, and togetherness define not just how Minnesotans survive winter, but how they find joy and meaning in it.

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Recommended For

• Anyone fascinated by Midwestern culture or who’s ever braved a harsh winter
• Those seeking nostalgic, evocative storytelling mixed with humor and wisdom
• Fans of literary reflections, survival stories, and regional folklore

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[End of Summary]

Transcript

[Tommy Mischke]

Mishke here, joining the GL world to.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Pitch my new podcast, which now comes out twice a week, Wednesdays and Fridays. The show features an extraordinary array of.

[Tommy Mischke]

Exotic circus performers, forgotten Hollywood starlets, reclusive Fortune 500 CEOs, professional taxidermists. Oh, wait a minute, that's a different promo.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Where's the promo for GL ers? Here it is.

[Tommy Mischke]

Let's try this again.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Mishke here pitching my new podcast. We're out of time.

[Tommy Mischke]

Could I do it again?

[Announcer]

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[Tommy Mischke]

Winter.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

This show is about winter time, a time of the year Minnesotans know so well. Winter has arrived.

[Tommy Mischke]

Those of us from this part of the country know what that means, what.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

That says, what that feels like. With the arrival of another winter in the north country, the feelings and the thoughts and the memories, they all come tumbling down from some hidden storehouse light shining on their familiar offerings, providing company to us in the cold. Company amidst the white and the gray and ultimately the all consuming darkness of late afternoon, winter arrives. And there's my childhood before me. The snow fort. The first home as a kid that was truly mine. My parents didn't even want to go out and look at it, and it was too cold. This was for me and me alone, as was the broken sled that I kept together with twine and the runny nose freezing in the morning air. There I am in my memory, wearing my brother's mittens, my sister's hat, but my own new pair of winter boots. And they're dry inside. And that's astonishing. My toes are cold, but that's always the case. You go till you can't take it anymore.

[Tommy Mischke]

We all did.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Oh, I still remember how wondrous those mittens felt when I first pulled them off the radiator in Minnesota.

[Tommy Mischke]

We all remember that first realization that mittens top gloves for warmth but not.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Dexterity, and that endless internal debate of which to wear as you head out with your friends. Gloves are cool, mittens are not. But the fingers stay warmer in the Mittens. But then again, gloves allow you to manipulate things with greater ease. What to do? What to do? There's that mound of white left by the big city ploughs. My friends and I have turned it into a tank. And there's the thrill of encountering the fresh white snow against the clearest of blue skies as the sun sends a.

[Tommy Mischke]

Spectacular sparkle across the yard.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

And Saturday. Saturday is handed to us for the taking. We bundled buddies, snow pants, parkas, sorrels, stocking caps.

[Tommy Mischke]

That feeling of our breath hitting the.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Scarves across our faces and coming back against our skin, warm and comforting.

[Tommy Mischke]

The unmistakable scent of the wool married.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

To the memory of the day. Here is our winter back once again. Not so much a season as an old companion.

[Tommy Mischke]

If you've lived long enough, if you've known the winters of childhood, of young adulthood and of middle age, if you've seen enough of these winters emerge from.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

That overwhelming color and beauty of autumn, sharp and stark and spare, you know that it's family.

[Tommy Mischke]

It's not about welcome or unwelcome.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

We're beyond that. It's just an intimate part of our existence, tethered forever to the experience of being alive here, integral to the inhaling and exhaling mysteries of the seasons. As those years roll by one against the other, these familiar winter scenes return to us again and again through time.

[Tommy Mischke]

Reminding us that nothing we know well.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Ever goes away for long. The things that are ours we can count on. And the things we can count on are ours. And we can count on winter.

[Tommy Mischke]

We are the great souls of the.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

North, shaped, formed, altered by our environment. Our personalities crystallized by the cold.

[Tommy Mischke]

You cannot take the cold from us.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

It is in us but in blustery glory, in windswept wonder, not in callousness or icy detachment.

[Tommy Mischke]

We are not children of winter's steely glare.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

We are held by its enthusiastic embrace.

[Tommy Mischke]

Taught by its poetic whispers. I love Winter like a child loves.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

His or her mama.

[Tommy Mischke]

Winter gave birth to a part of who we are. Summer is the light hearted uncle who picks us up on the weekend and whisks us away to some wonderland of irresponsibility.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

But winter is Mother, and we are.

[Tommy Mischke]

Home now as she busies herself with things we don't always appreciate yet recognize.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

As her sacred duties.

[Tommy Mischke]

We watch her with a kind of awe or a grudging respect, not always happy to be here, but so often knowing we belong nowhere else.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

There are people I know who have left Minnesota, left their childhood home for greener pastures, and when they return for.

[Tommy Mischke]

Visits, it's fascinating to me how they are no longer quite the same. You can tell that some of the Minnesota has been taken out of them wherever they've gone. They've been retrained in a different kind of living, and Minnesota is a bit.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

More foreign to them now, a little.

[Tommy Mischke]

More inhospitable, colder than they remember, a little harder to fit into, with the same degree of comfort and ease. For those of us who have stayed.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

However, it just gets more comfortable, kind.

[Tommy Mischke]

Of like an old sweater. And we've learned what people learn in all cold climates that you have two choices if you want a fulfilling existence. Get the hell out of here. Or turn directly toward the cold, meet its stare, and watch closely as those icy blue eyes soften, take on a welcoming twinkle, and no longer seem to belong to the steely guard at the gate, but rather to the host of the grand soiree. You joining the party or you heading south, east or west? That's the question. We're cool either way.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Pardon the pun.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Johnny's grandfather bought a truck from Fury Motors in 2005. He's been dead for 12 years now. Last month, Johnny bought a Jeep from Fury Motors. Same salesperson. Johnny didn't even consider going anywhere else. Four locations. Waconia Forest, Lake, Stillwater, South St. Paul. Ford, GMC, Buick, Chrysler, Dodge Jeep.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

All new.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

And then every make and model you can think of in their used inventory. Somewhere along the line, Fury figured out how to make a car dealership feel like the opposite of a car dealership. No dread, no games, no bs, no hidden costs, no salesman tricks. Just people who remember your name. Remember your granddaddy's name. Fury Motors since 1963. They're not only selling vehicles, they're the last place you'll ever buy one.

[Tommy Mischke]

Believe me, the family that takes the Internet on vacation.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Is the family that.

[Tommy Mischke]

Finds a better beach in peak crab mating season.

[Advertiser]

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[Tommy Mischke]

Don't get caught in a pinch. Pack the Internet, Download Airalo today. That's A I R A L O Airalo and use code CRAB for 15% off your first ESIM terms apply.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Here's what happened. Last Thursday, wee hours of the morning, a fella calls, his boiler has died. It's late December. He's got a newborn. MSP, as in Minneapolis St. Paul Plumbing, heating and Air. Says they'll be there in 30 minutes. He says you do boilers? He's shocked. Then he asks if they do tankless water heaters. Yeah, we do that too. Water softeners? Yeah. Sump pumps? Yeah. Heat pumps? Uh huh. Ductless systems? You bet. Backflow prevention?

[Tommy Mischke]

Mm.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Mainline drains? Yes. Furnaces? Of course. Faucets?

[Tommy Mischke]

Hahaha.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Toilets? Yes. They just never stopped saying yes. Most everyone else out there picked a lane. But MSP kept all their skills, hired people who actually wanted to learn everything, trained them to master it. And when you call msp, you are calling masters. Water, air, heat, all of it. One call msp.

[Tommy Mischke]

We might have to go a little bit shallower. If we're not. If we're not. Yeah, that school's over there. Oh my goodness. Oh, he's got one that's big. You got him. Got him big in. Oh, Sunrise crappie. You just say ice fishing and people try and come up with a quick, humorous retort. It's like an automatic setup for a joke. Who can follow with the best Punchline? Minnesota writer D.J. tice had this to say. After learning that the principal action in ice fishing is checking one's minnow, and after beginning to worry that my bait was holding up better than I was, I asked the question, what's the fun in ice fishing? Well, one might as well ask what fun medieval pilgrims found in trudging barefoot to Jerusalem. Or what kick Eastern mystics derive from hair shirts and self flagellation. The secret is, ice fishing has nothing whatsoever to do with fun. It is instead an exotic rite of mortification, preparing the ice fisher for life's pangs, disappointments and tedium. It's especially good for tedium. Okay, dj, nice work. Many, many writers have taken similar stabs at creating humor out of this pastime. It's a damn easy target. I don't ice fish myself. I have done it. But truth is, I'd rather stare at the way the ice and the blue sky and the sun work together to deliver an image of such brilliant beauty that no fourth ingredient is necessary. Ice, blue sky, golden sunshine. There is a point at which this simple, sublime presentation brings me the sensation of eternity. So that's me. No pole, no bait, no fish. Make a joke out of that. But DJ Tice, like many mocks the sport. And I would join him, except for this. On a northern Minnesota lake in the heart of winter. These three friends ice fish together, and there is no denying they are living in the moment. They are delightfully happy. They're not remotely interested in running inside to a movie theater or to a pool hall or to some lazy boy in front of a television. Television set. They are simply enjoying an utterly simple pleasure on a winter day in the north country. There it goes.

[Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht]

Whoa. There goes yours.

[Tommy Mischke]

Oh, is that a pretty fish?

[Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht]

Doesn't get any better than this.

[Tommy Mischke]

I'm just gonna try and grab this guy in here. Come on, buddy.

[Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht]

Come on.

[Tommy Mischke]

There he is.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Beautiful.

[Tommy Mischke]

Nice.

[Meteorologist Joe Thompson]

This is as good as it gets.

[Tommy Mischke]

Oh, man, I'm gonna get my. There we go. What an awesome fish, man. Come here. I'm trying, I'm trying.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Oh.

[Tommy Mischke]

There he is.

[Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht]

Nice fish.

[Advertiser]

Where, where, where do you do this?

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Right here.

[Tommy Mischke]

This is just unbelievable fishing. What I love about this is, yes, this is typical of the level of intellectual stimulation available between men seated around a fishing hole, but the absolute belief that it doesn't get any better than this. It's so genuine, so heartfelt, so charming, that it causes me to wonder if life was ever supposed to be much more complicated. What these friends are doing, fundamentally on a Saturday afternoon with the thermometer reading 16 degrees, is just plain getting outside and doing something. It is what this season asks of Minnesotans if our people wish to remain pleasant, well adjusted, healthy human beings. Get the hell outside and do something, as people were not built to hibernate. A few winters ago, I got outside to do something that I had never heard of anyone else doing. Am I proud of what I'm about to tell you? No, I am not. I have a one room cabin on a river in the country up north, and after it snows during the night, I often wake up to the tracks of animals all around the property. As an old Indian friend of mine told me, those tracks tell a story of the night. And you can read the story like a book if you want to by spending time with the tracks. Well, one set of tracks routinely belonged to a red fox, a creature whose tracks I had seen for years, but who had never shown his face in daylight.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Never.

[Tommy Mischke]

I had such a burning desire to see this animal. Number one, because the red fox is one of the most beautiful creatures you.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Can encounter during a Minnesota winter.

[Tommy Mischke]

That lush, thick red coat and tail against the white powdery snow. And number two, because this creature was being so elusive, I felt nature was offering me a challenge. Try and See this animal, fella? It clearly doesn't want you to see it. But you're smarter. You're human. Find a way to see it. I thought of setting up motion cameras, but that wasn't the kind of seeing I wanted to do. I wanted to see it in person, in daylight. Not some figure passing a motion camera in the darkness. But to bring it out of its den in the sunshine. I would need to trick it. Or so I read. Yes, read. I found an old book at a thrift store in a nearby small town and. And it passed along. If you want to see a red fox during the day, this is what you should do. Go to a snowy area near the den of the fox. Bring a white sheet with two holes cut in it for eyes. Bring a tape recorder and a cassette tape of a baby rabbit in pain. Now, remarkably, you could buy cassette tapes back then of baby rabbits in pain, kind of squealing. This must have been for hunters or something, I don't know. Anyway, I got a hold of this tape and I got my tape player and my sheet and. And what I was instructed to do was go under the sheet in the snowy area with my tape recorder, be real quiet, play the recording of the baby rabbit in pain and sit there looking through the holes in the sheet in the direction of the fox den, waiting for the fox to emerge from the den. And they swore the fox would emerge because it would know that its prey was wounded and weak. Folks, I want to tell you something. I sat there in the cold in a snow pile covered with a sheet like some freakin Klansman playing that squealing sound over and over again. The sound of a baby rabbit in pain for two hours on a cold January afternoon before realizing this was the most absurd use of my time ever devised. Ice fishing looked flat out profound in comparison. It appeared utterly intelligent and enlightening compared to the embarrassment that was me sitting beneath that sheet along that riverbank. All of a sudden the humiliation just washed over me. No fox was coming out of any den. And this strange little book that I had found might as well have been a book of practical jokes. I had been dup. Five 32 of an inch. Five 32nds of an inch. A fellow passed this along to me many years ago in a saloon. 5 32nds of an inch. I was a young man and this wise old soul was passing along a fraction that all Minnesotans need to memorize.5 32 of an inch. The depth of tread you at least better have on those tires before driving on Snow. It's a fraction that goes with nothing else. Nothing. Google it. You'll come up with Nothing but tire info. 5 32nds of an inch. People in Texas don't know what on earth that fraction is all about. They're not using that fraction down there for anything. That's a Minnesota fraction right there. 532 of an inch. And let's see what other numbers you need to memorize in Minnesota in the wintertime. How about 1101110 1. A Canadian gave us this one smart fella, a doctor, Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht. You know why we need the good doctor? To help us address another annual ritual in the north country. The inevitable falls through the ice. In this land of over 11,000 frozen lakes and several thousand more frozen ponds and 70,000 miles of rivers and streams every year, without fail, we read these headlines. Here we go. Sartel man in critical coma after falling through thin ice. Fisherman falls through ice in Watertown. Man dies after ATV falls through ice in Aiken County, Minnesota. Man dies after snowmobile goes through thin ice. Pickup truck falls through ice at Grays Bay in Minnetonka. Third angler in two days falls through ice. Pair rescued after utility vehicle falls through the ice. Growing up in Minnesota, this too is part of the culture year after year. You can count on it. Well, you know what the good doctor does on our behalf? I've seen him hurl himself onto thin ice so as to purposely break through. He cross country skis onto thin ice so as to intentionally bust through the thin clear floor below him and become immersed in that godless water. He's even purposely taken a snowmobile onto ice and hit open water just to fall in and figure out how best to handle the situation. He goes in so we don't have to, and he's the man who gave us 110 1. You put that in your memory banks next to 5, 32 of an inch. 110 1. Ready. When you go into that icy water, take the first minute just to get your breathing under control. The body will allow you to do that, but it'll take about a minute. You, you need to focus on calming the breath and nothing else. Forget trying to get out. The first minute is for calming that involuntary gasping that the cold water has produced. If you don't do that, you could drown. The next number, 1010 is how many minutes you have to use your limbs before your muscles will become absolutely useless. You have 10 minutes to get yourself out of there. And the last digit one is for one hour. You have a solid hour before you will lose consciousness from hypothermia. And that's significant. There is time to be rescued. Even if you can't get yourself out in those first 10 minutes, you will not die right away. Let's now go to our freezing cold doctor currently in the icy water on a frozen lake.

[Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht]

What happens when you get really cold? Your skin. Cold skin starts a cold shock response which gets you to. You first start gasping and hyperventilating and breathing way more than you need to, and that's really bad. If your head goes under the water when you gasp the first time and you drown immediately, The cold shock will last between one and three minutes. The real important thing to know is that you'll get over that. Just trust me, you will get over it. So if you do ever fall into cold water, the main thing you need to think about for the first minute is just not drowning. You don't have to get out, you don't have to do anything else. Just get over that. Try and get your breathing under control. And when that happens, then you've got some time to try and do other things. A common mistake is people just try to pull themselves straight up. There's no way you can get out. There's no way. Now remember, there's no panic here. My breathing is out of control. Try and get to get my body horizontal.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Okay?

[Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht]

So as it is, I can't get out of here. So the bottom line is, unless somebody comes to rescue me right now, I'm gonna become unconscious and drown. Well, I got actually a long time before I would die of hypothermia. So what I want to do right now is widen the window of opportunity for the rescue team to get here. If I haven't gotten out of here within five to 10 minutes, I'm not gonna get out. So if I just thrash around, I'm gonna lose more heat and I'm gonna get exhausted and I'll drown even in quicker. So I try and relax. I won't be wasting heat and I won't be exhausting myself. Get as much of my body out of the water as possible because I'll lose less heat from that area. At a given temperature. Water takes heat away from the body about 25 times faster than air at the same temperature. So at this point, I'm just going to get my arms on the ice and I want to keep them here and not move them. If I'm lucky, my arms will freeze to the ice before I become unconscious. If I become unconscious and I just slip down here, I'll drown. But if I become unconscious and my arms are frozen to the ice, I'll at least be here for a little bit longer.

[Tommy Mischke]

Somebody help him.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Jake's mother forgot his name last Tuesday. But she remembered the song that her daddy sang to her back in 1948. That's the thing about memory. It doesn't disappear. It relocates. It hides in different rooms. And most memory care facilities, they treat all those rooms the same. The Wellshire doesn't. They built four separate worlds for the four different stages of memory care. Early stage memory loss is not late stage. The person who forgets where she parked needs different care than the person who forgets he has children. Four quadrants, four realities. Each one designed for people living in that particular chapter of their lives. Most families pick the place that's closest. 15 minutes feels better than driving 40 minutes. But here's my question. How far would you drive? For the people who actually understand who your mother is? How far would you drive to be with people who love your mother? Wellshire Memory Care center of Bloomington and Medina My cousin called me last week having what I can only describe as a banking existential crisis. He'd been with the same massive National bank for 19 years. Never had a problem. Everything worked. But he was trying to get a loan to renovate his house. And he realized mid conversation with some representative named Chad, who was clearly in a call center somewhere reading a script, that Chad had absolutely no idea who he was, nor did he care. 19 years and he was just an account number. So my cousin did something crazy. He switched to North American Banking Company. They've got six Twin Cities locations. By his third visit, they knew his name. Not from a screen. They just remembered. When he sat down to talk about his renovation loan, the person across from him actually listened to what he was trying to do, what he wanted. Made a decision right there. Because it's a community bank, they can do that. My cousin calls me now just to tell me how weird it feels to bank somewhere that truly feels like the old days where people knew you liked you. North American Banking Company where you're not an account number, you're a neighbor.

[Tommy Mischke]

North American Banking Company member, fdic. Equal Housing Lender.

[Announcer]

That bitter wind out there sure didn't make it feel any warmer. Like in Winthrop, where it fell to 36 below.

[Advertiser]

Winter is here and it's causing trouble on the roads.

[Announcer]

From 8am yesterday to 4 this afternoon, there were 665 crashes highway havoc in.

[Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht]

The Midwest from Iowa to Minnesota.

[Tommy Mischke]

Awful. I didn't Expect it to get this bad.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

It's intense, freezing freeways, sending cars sliding off the road and into each other.

[Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht]

The treacherous conditions causing this 24 car.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Pileup outside of Minneapolis.

[Tommy Mischke]

Drivers facing blinding snow. Trucks jackknifing off Interstate 90 near Austin, Minnesota.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Authorities urging residents to stay off the roads.

[Tommy Mischke]

Oh, to be a meteorologist in Minnesota, where the weatherman is a rock star. I went storm chasing years ago with Dave Dahl, the dean of Twin Cities meteorologists. First of all, the very idea of storm chasing has that strange quality of almost fetishizing the weather. I mean, who the heck had the time or inclination to storm chase during the first 250,000 years of human civilization? I think folks were just pretty happy there wasn't a storm in their midst and because of it they got a bunch of stuff done. They didn't say, gee, we ought to go find a storm. It's a different age now, of course we go and chase storms. Has something to do on the weekend. Well, on the way to find a big storm to hurl ourselves into, preferably with tornadoes. Yes, Dave Dahl told me what a coveted position it was, this weatherman gig. And here in Minnesota, all the meteorologists in the country worth their salt wanted that job. He said so much variety in Minnesota. Such a challenge for a weatherman. So many interesting facets to it all. Plus the weather guy was often the person leading the news, not the anchor man or woman, not the sports guy, the, the weather guy. The theme music ended and there he was. He wasn't being pushed to the end of the show. He was front and cent.

[Meteorologist Joe Thompson]

Hi everybody, I'm meteorologist Joe Thompson. If that 10 inches from the New Year's Day storm wasn't enough, well, we could possibly double that by the time we get to late Sunday night and early Monday morning, another very large winter storm system is heading in our direction. Chances for some whiteout conditions. And if that wasn't enough, we're talking about brutally cold temperatures. There's really nowhere to go to escape this storm. Even our surrounding areas are under the winter storm warning as well. I obviously don't make the calls on the schools, but I got a feeling most kids are going to have a snow cold day on Monday.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

You can almost pick it up in.

[Tommy Mischke]

His facial expressions if you're watching him on tv. I mean, you could see it in his eyes. The excitement, the thrill, the joy of being the guy with his hand on the pulse of the season. He's the man. At least for right now, he's the man. No one's looking for a crime report, Some story of a burning building. A cute human interest piece. This is call to action. Bare bones. Weather warning. Roll up your sleeves. Meteorologist stuff and people in Minnesota eat it up. What weather?

[Narrator/Advertiser]

More weather.

[Announcer]

Good.

[Tommy Mischke]

I want to hear more weather.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Weather is the great equalizer.

[Tommy Mischke]

I mean, some people are into sports and some people are not into sports, but everybody gets slammed by the weather at the same time. It's there for all of us. Happening to all of us. This from writer Ed Dwyer.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

People want to see what's going on.

[Tommy Mischke]

They don't just want to look at the weather map on tv. They want their weather person in the thick of it. They want to feel the power of the weather. It's entertainment, albeit entertainment with life and death consequences. A hybrid of entertainment and public service that the seemingly weather obsessed can't get enough of. And for good reason. It's storytelling and weather stories have a kind of drama, a contest between man and Mother Nature. Nowadays there are websites, smartphones, mobile apps, blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all being employed. To satisfy this seemingly unquenchable demand for weather news, adults in America obtain an average of 4 weather forecasts a day per person.

[Announcer]

Snow removal begins on the evening. A snow emergency is declared at 9pm and continues the following day until snow streets have been plowed curb to curb. All streets are designated either night plow routes or day plow routes. Night plow routes have red and white plow route signs.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

This is another Minnesota tradition, getting your car towed to the city impound lot.

[Tommy Mischke]

All because you failed to get it.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Off the streets when a snow emergency was declared. Now, I kinda like the idea of a city declaring a snow emergency. It's sort of like a poor man's version of the federal government declaring a disaster area. That, of course, sounds even cooler. A disaster area has been declared. Snow never quite leaves us with that disaster type declaration, though if it did, I bet the towing fees would quadruple. As it stands, they're already exorbitant. And of course they have you. You have to give them whatever they.

[Tommy Mischke]

Want or you can't get your car out. They can demand anything and they often do. Forms and ID and proof of insurance. And hey, are there any outstanding parking tickets? And wait a minute, is that car even legal to drive? And did you know we charge you for every day we have the car in our possession? Oh, it's a humbling, humiliating thing to go through the whole process.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

First of all, the impound lot is in a part of the city that resembles a former Siberian Soviet military base. And the officials you have to deal with are large, gruff men in a.

[Tommy Mischke]

Tower overlooking a snow covered lot. Don't talk to me. How many times I told you, don't start to talk to me.

[Advertiser]

And if I get trouble.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

I've had recurring nightmares involving these fellows. Most of the guys have mustaches or goatees. They're overweight, fleshy bags under their eyes, looking like their mom. Never showed them much love. That's how they ended up in this job in the first place. I have nightmares where I have all my forms in order and my ID and proof of insurance and the right dollar amount. And it's still not enough for these guys. They say one final thing, fella. Before we let you go, dance for us.

[Tommy Mischke]

What?

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Dance, boy? What do you mean?

[Tommy Mischke]

Do you understand English, boy?

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Dance till we tell you to stop. You want to get your car out of here, you better give us a little dance.

[Tommy Mischke]

Ain't that right, Roger?

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Why, that's right, Dan. Everybody's got to do a little dance for us.

[Tommy Mischke]

Well, I don't know any dance. Then make one up, boy. A jig or something. Or just sway your body a little.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Bit back and forth and back and forth for us.

[Tommy Mischke]

This is really sick. What the hell's wrong with you guys? We're stuck in this impound lot 12 hours a day, boy. That's what's wrong with us. Look at this world of concrete and chain link fence and barbed wire. This gray, lifeless existence. It's all we've known our entire careers. Now give us a respite from the monotony. Do a little dance, then we'll give you your car. Course, we gotta tell you, we damaged the undercarriage a little bit. We also messed up the front left fender liner and that engine undercover. But that's not important right now. What's important is that you do some dancing. You want to freestyle, you freestyle. You want to do something more formal, that's fine. You need a partner. Roger here knows the bossa nova.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Sam, I came up with a poem and I scribbled it down in the dim light of that cabin along that frozen river. The haunting wind letting me know that the 20 below outside would feel more like 45 below if I were to venture out that door. Moments earlier, I had felt something. Something I couldn't quite name. A certain sensation that had moved me. I wrote down the lines that I heard in my head. Lines I wanted to get down on paper before going to sleep. My wife had just finished reading out loud a Jack London short story. Called to build a fire. I thought about how the only thing keeping us alive in that one room cabin were those logs in that wood burning stove and that flame. That was the difference between comfort and freezing to death. The candle lights, the frost, the window beside our old brass bed. She reads to me from Jack London on her breast. I rest my head. The wind howls like spirits but ghosts all hide from this cold. We're all alone on the tundra with only each other to hold. I put the pen down and as my wife turned out the light, I thought about fire. It was warming us, but it was doing more than that. And there was that candle in the window as well. It was doing something to us also. There was the unmistakable warmth in the heart burning softly, created in a single moment where several things had come together and had brought a kind of peace in that bitter cold. Jack London's words, my woman beside me and the wailing wind unable to reach us but taunting us from outside the window. Taunting us or serenading us? I would learn much later that in Denmark they had a name for this feeling that had washed over me, a name that did not translate into English. Hygge. And this is where I would like to leave you all with this here Minnesota winter show with that feeling of Hygge. It's the sensation we all should take with us heading into every Minnesota winter, the one we should call upon time and time again. Do you know about Hygge at all? It's the subject of my final segment coming up after these messages.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Tim's right eyeball filed a complaint against him last month, said that he had been forcing it to look through architecturally boring rectangles for years, and it was annoying as hell. The other eyeball joined in too, after a while, so he had to go to Spectacle Shop pretty quickly. That's where eyeballs sinew when they're done with this nonsense. Spectacle Shop has been making eyeballs happy for half a century. Star Tribune readers voted them the best eyewear shop in Minnesota the last five years in a row. They've got vintage frames from decades your grandparents forgot existed. They have designer frames so exclusive it makes other optical shops weep. And they have actual eye doctors on staff who speak fluent eyeball. When you walk into Spectacle Shop, you're where the artists go, the musicians go, celebrities. Spectacle Shop, four Twin Cities locations where your eyeballs finally forgive you for everything you've put them through. Not long ago, I sat in Josh Arnold's office talking to him about retirement savings plans, ways to prepare to be in a good position financially when retirement comes. I was able to sit across from him and take a good hard look at him. He's an interesting character, someone you probably need in your life, but you don't know you need him. I honestly think most people don't realize how much a guy like this can help them. I needed him, I'll tell you that. Anyway, I looked at this kindly older man who's been helping people understand the market and their money for decades. A guy who has seen it all. And I said, there's the face of a human being someone can trust. I was soothed just being with him. He's offering you 48 minutes free on the phone just to talk. You can hang up afterward and never call him again. But you'll get a sense of what he does and you'll get a sense of where you are in your world financially and where maybe you could be. It costs nothing to talk to him. 952-925-5608 Investment services offered by Josh Arnold, Investment Consultant, LLC.

[Tommy Mischke]

A security and investment advisor. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. All investments involve risk.

[Advertiser]

Tommy Mischke is a paid endorser.

[Announcer]

It's very hard to explain exactly what it is. It's not just a word. It is a concept. It's a way of living that the deans have perfected.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

It's not a thing that you can buy.

[Tommy Mischke]

It's more like a state of mind. It's a feeling. It's not something that you explain or something that you achieve. You just step into it.

[Announcer]

I think Hygge just. Just happens, you know, you can't say, now we're going to Hygge.

[Tommy Mischke]

The concept is not as complex as it might sound. It's just that the translation is not a translation that can be summed up in a single word. The way I would describe it is.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

As in the wintertime in the northland.

[Tommy Mischke]

The world outside is vast and sprawling and gray and cold and out the window. It doesn't always look so inviting. So the counterbalance to that is its opposite.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Intimacy, coziness, a warmth, an internal sense of well being.

[Tommy Mischke]

One doesn't gather with acquaintances to create this. One gathers with the dearest of friends, the ones with whom, when you're with them, you don't want the evening to end.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

There's a deliberateness to this kind of living.

[Tommy Mischke]

You think it through. You don't grab fast food at a drive through and create Hygge. You stand by a pot, cooking slowly on the stove in a warm kitchen. Thick soup scooped into a ceramic bowl, brought out to the living room where there's a fire in the fireplace. Or you sit in a restaurant warmly lit with candles on the table. Not a sprawling airplane hangar of a restaurant. A small, simple and intimate cafe where.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

People know one another.

[Tommy Mischke]

The mood and ambiance that comes with Hygge is always intimate and rich, warm.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

And cozy, like curling up with a.

[Tommy Mischke]

Blanket and the best book you've read in months. That feeling that accompanies such a simple pleasure, That's Hygge. It is, in fact, taking the complexity out of life and finding its essential joy and richness. Friends, family, time spent in simple conviviality with the atmosphere and ambiance matching the mood. It's how winter is not only tolerated, but embraced.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

On the subject of curling up with a favorite book and a blanket on a cold winter evening, creating that wondrous sensation of Hygge, I have to say.

[Tommy Mischke]

For me, the book is almost always.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Going to be a cold weather survival tale. Nonfiction.

[Tommy Mischke]

I'm not entirely sure why that is. It might be the same reason that people go to haunted houses or go on thrill rides.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

They want to encounter the sensation of danger while deep down knowing they're perfectly safe.

[Tommy Mischke]

They're going to try on the feeling of terror and facing adversity, but in a controlled environment.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

In that way, the fear, according to psychologists, actually turns into excitement.

[Tommy Mischke]

And yes, because I'm not actually hanging off that crevasse in the Arctic, my fingers and toes frostbitten, half my friends already dead, I don't feel despondent. I'm thinking, oh boy, this is really something. And I pour a tiny bit more whiskey into my hot coffee. Here's a list of what's on my bookshelves right now. The Ice Passage. A true story of ambition, disaster and endurance in the Arctic. The impossible rescue. Alone on the ice, 81 days below zero, near death. In the true stories of disaster and survival in the Kingdom of Ice. A wall of White. The true story of heroism and survival in the face of a deadly avalanche in the land of White Death. The Ice Master fatal passage. And of course, the best of them all, Ernest Shackleton's insane adventures with the.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Crew of the Endurance.

[Tommy Mischke]

I mean, the things you read in these tales leave you feeling. You got it pretty good, even if it is 17 below and the city.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

Just towed your car to some gulag.

[Tommy Mischke]

I mean, just listen to this random passage here. During the 1950s, the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements but one family from Arctic Bay was worried because their grandfather refused to go to the settlements. The family, fearful for his life, took away all of his tools and all of his implements, thinking that would force him onto the settlement. But instead, Grandpa just slipped out of an igloo on a cold Arctic night, pulled down his caribou and sealskin trousers, defecated into his hand, and as the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of an implement. And when the blade started to take shape, he put a spray of saliva along the leading edge to sharpen it. He used it to butcher a dog, skinned the dog with it, improvised a sled with the dog's rib cage, and then using the skin, he harnessed up an adjacent living dog, put the knife in his belt and disappeared into the night.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

You see, that makes the use of.

[Tommy Mischke]

Twine to hold my sled boards together seem not nearly as ingenious. And it inspires me to be more creative in my thinking. And I love it when explorers are just about ready to cash it in. It looks like it's over. But yet they find one last ounce of resolve from reserves they didn't even know they had. Like Douglas Mawson, the Arctic explorer. January 1913. He was losing his men one by one in a deadly three day blizzard. Some were going mad. One had bit off his own finger in a fit of insanity. Mawson himself was near collapse. His toes were blackened and festering near the tips. The soles of his feet had separated from the flesh beneath them. Day after day, moving through blizzard conditions, he was exhausted. Food rations were gone. He was down to eating his own sled dogs. Then one day he falls into a crevasse and. And it looks like it's all over. He's dangling in midair from his harness and is way too weak to even consider trying to get out. He decides to just release the harness and fall into the abyss. He says to himself, I look forward to the sweet release of death. And then suddenly, a poem he had memorized as a child in school popped into his head. And what a poem it was. It's one we should all keep with us. Maybe in our glove compartments next to the cold weather survival kit. It's by Robert Service and it's called the Quitter.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

I'm quite serious here.

[Tommy Mischke]

This is the poem that popped into Mawson's head and gave him the resolve to get out of that crevasse and continue on and eventually be rescued. I leave you with it now.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

When.

[Minnesota Native/Storyteller]

You'Re lost in the wild, and scared as a child. And death looks you bang in the eye and you're sore as a boil. It's according to Hoyle to cock your revolver and die. But the code of a man says fight all you can. Self dissolution is barred in hunger and woe. Oh, it's easy to blow. It's the hell served for breakfast that's hard. You're sick of the game. Well now that's a shame. You're young, you're brave and you're bright. You've had a raw deal. I know, but don't squeal, Buck up, do your damnedest and fight. It's the plugging away that'll win you the day. So don't be a piker, old pard. Just draw on your grit. It's dead easy to quit. It's the keeping your chin up that's hard. It's easy to cry that you're beaten and die. It's easy to crayfish and crawl. But to fight and to fight when hope's out of sight. That's the best game of them all. And though you come out of each grueling bout all beaten, broken and scarred. Just have one more try. It's dead easy to die. It's the keeping on living that's hard.