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| It took more than a month, dozens of volunteers and tons of snow to create Olympia. Jim Sysko, a civil engineer, oversaw design and construction.. | To get an idea of scale, Olympia is about 30 feet shorter than the Statue of Liberty (without the base). Her arms consist of 27-foot-tall evergreens. |
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| Her "carrot" nose, painted by schoolchildren, is 8 feet long. Her eyes are made from giant wreaths. | She was built with a series of concentric circles. The crane dumped the snow into frames, and volunteers climbed in for long hours shoveling and packing the snow. |
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| "The best part of it is how everyone in town pitched in and made it happen," said volunteer David Lynch. "It got hairy up at the top. I only made it to 80 feet." | The final product is the talk of the town. People especially liked the lashes created from old skis donated from the Sunday River ski resort. |
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| Angus was certified as the world's tallest snowman by the Guinness Book of Records. It remains to be seen if Olympia will get the nod as tallest snowman, or snowwoman. There's currently no separate category for snowwoman, so residents are petitioning for one. | There was plenty of snow for the project. Parts of Maine have had more than 100 inches of snow this season, unlike 1999 when Angus was built. Volunteers started with manmade snow and then used snow piled on the runway of the municipal airport to finish the job. |
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| "People love it. With all this snow, we did something good with it," said Darlene Ginsberg, who directed traffic with one hand while holding a cup of hot coffee in the other. After the ceremony, local resident Julia Reuter stepped to the microphone and led the crowd in an impromptu singalong to the classic song, "Winter Wonderland." | In fact, more winter weather was on tap for Friday night. Alex Kaufman from Sunday River credited Olympia for bringing the snowiest winter in 12 years. Then he took a jab at Angus. "Angus didn't bring squat for snow," he quipped. "In this case, it took a woman to get it done." |
2009 Index || February2009 Index