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ANCIENT ICE FOR A GLACIAL GLASS
If William F. Baker were to take liberties with Ogden Nash's verse, he might say:
Ice Is nice But a glacier Is tastier. Mr. Baker, president of Group W Television, is one of the few people in the world - there are reportedly eight - who have been to both the North and South Poles. It was on last year's visit up north that Mr. Baker says he became aware of the purity and cleanliness of Greenland's glaciers, which were formed up to 100,000 years ago.
Mr. Baker recalls being so impressed with the glacial ice that he arranged to bring 120 pounds of it, chipped, back home to present as Christmas gifts to 20 close friends, among them Grant Tinker, president of NBC. ''It was a way of sharing my love for the polar regions,'' Mr. Baker said. At Kennedy International Airport the customs agents gave a cold shoulder to the suggestion that since the ice was more than 100 years old it should be regarded as antique and therefore allowed in duty free. It was, customs declared, food and thus subject to duty. Finally, however, they decided it was merely ice and duty free at that.
The gifts of ice proved so successful that, at the suggestion of Alan Glazer, a friend who owns an advertising agency, Mr. Baker negotiated with officials in Greenland, a territory of Denmark, to be the sole American distributor of the ice.
The next move was to get together with an importer of frozen fish to transport the ice and with Bill Lane, buyer of gourmet foods for Bloomingdale's, who proclaims the ice ''a quality product worthy of being in a gourmet-food department.''
''People will respond to the quality and romance of the past,'' Mr. Lane said.
Mr. Baker concurs. ''What's more perfect for celebrating the birth of a child or a wedding than 12-year-old Scotch with 100,000-year-old ice?'' he asks.
That is the message that will appear on the Mylar bags in which the ice, called Glazonice after Mr. Glazer, will be sold. Referring to the sounds of the melting ice's popping air bubbles, the bag will say, ''Put your ear close to the glass and listen to the whispering of the past.''
The whispers are scheduled to begin in late April at Bloomingdale's, where a 35-ounce bag of Glazonice will cost $7. This could be just the tip of the iceberg.
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