Our Kind of Polar Bear

A break from the serious: We Minnesotans tend to shake our heads over “polar bear” clubs, where people go swimming on, say, New Year’s Day, usually in climes that by our standards are pretty mild. San Francisco Bay, say. We’re not impressed: in Lake Superior, even in the summer, life expectancy is measured in minutes if you should fall off a boat. In January, no one here goes swimming. Well, you can’t, really, since bodies of water are frozen solid.
Here, however, courtesy of Yahoo News photos, we have a “polar bear” who earns our admiration on all counts, Patricia Archdeacon of Clarksburg, Md.:

This is no wimpy swim. Note the ice in Chesapeake Bay off Annapolis, MD, where I spent two delightful summers in my youth, living with an uncle who was a spy. The main hazard then was jellyfish; I doff my hat to those who brave the ice.