It goes to the opening Graves' article on the 1st Annual Capitol Hill Ice Rink:
I am from upstate New York, one of those places where a million little lakes freeze over and you pull to the side of a country road on a bleak afternoon and ice-skate. Doing this is like holding hands with the universe. To approximate the transcendence of this experience, I go to ice rinks every year, and every year I am absolutely satisfied, no matter how crowded or dinky the rink, because humans figure-eighting or stumbling and falling with their many-colored mittens as the music plays—punctuated by the clack! of the metal on ice and the fweet! of skaters stopping sideways and sending up sprays of shaved ice—is the most charming thing in the world. Ice-skating is churchless holiday heaven...This kind of writing is pure music to my ears. As for the fake ice rink thing, I have no opinion. I last ice-skated 30 years ago and so could not tell the difference between real and not real.
- Eli Sanders
