It's the first furious snowfall of the season, coming down like clumps of soggy cornflakes and leaving a 2-inch thick layer of slush on the road.

Of course no one remembers how to drive in snow and the police scanner is going bonkers with - one after the other - runoffs, spinouts, rollovers.

On top of that it's thundering and lightning with reports of power outages. Freaky stuff.

Meanwhile, it's the anniversary of the sinking of the Great Lakes freighter, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, around 7:10 p.m. tonight.

If I was computer savy I could post a photo of what was once a proud vessel, but alas, I can barely blog.

For no known reason, maybe because we all need real lives, it's an official holiday in The Reporter newsroom. Up goes a photo on the bulletin board of the famous ship, bound for destruction on Nov. 10, 1975 when it sank in Lake Superior during a typical November storm. Probably a freaky one, like this one.

Snibbits of Gordon Lightfoot's song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" are sung, intermittently, throughout the day. If we are really lucky Tom may bring in a copy from his endless music collection and play it for the unsuspecting newbie who asks "The Edmund what?"

"..The lake it is said never gives up her dead
when the skies of November turn gloomy..."


Gary said he knows a guy that was stationed on the Fitzgerald, before its demise, who works in Fond du Lac. He's superstitious enough not to talk about his association with the unlucky freighter and gave Gary his discharge papers from the ship.


Aaron in Green Bay, who used to work here, said his father tells the story of picking up a hitchhiker, a sailor, and driving him to his destination and ironically, his final demise. The sailor boarded the Fitzgerald that fateful night and the rest is history.

Aaron writes:

"On cold November nights, when the west wind whips against the windows of my father's bedroom, he still sees the cold, drenched, eternally extended thumb of the hitchhiking sailor, and he fears it beckons him to join the lost seaman on his lonely journey."

We salute you, brave crew of 29.

"Does anyone know where the love of God goes

when the waves turn the minutes to hours? "