Interested in helping yourself become a loser?

A North Syracuse, N.Y., school principal wants to break Bismarck's 2002 record for the most snow angels made simultaneously - 1,791 - an achievement that made national news and got Bismarck into the Guinness Book of World Records.

He'd like your help.

Anyone interested is invited to go to North Syracuse and drop and flap - do some angel-making in this record-breaking effort Feb. 19 on a baseball field near North Syracuse Junior High School, said David Zehner, associate principal at North Syracuse.

Don't look at it as self-defeating behavior. Zehner just said he thinks - and apparently said he thinks you'll agree - that the Syracuse area, best known for its snow and cold, should be the holder of all snow-related records.

Whatever.

Marilyn Synder, curator of education for the State Historical Society of North Dakota and the one who thought up the snow angel idea, is a kind woman, which co-worker Sharon Silengo confirmed.

But Synder asked the following of Zehner's recording-breaking ideas: Does she plan to travel to New York? Nay.

Does she wish New York well? No.

Synder has nothing against North Syracuse, located just north of Syracuse. There is the question, though, of whether there are enough "angels" in that part of the country to pull it off.

"I think we're a little more angelic," she said, tongue in cheek.

But seriously.

She said Bismarck's accomplishment was a first. Guinness didn't have a simultaneous-snow-angel-making category until then. It meant a lot to people in the state and still does.

"I still get e-mails and phone calls about it," Synder said.

She said it was almost a spiritual experience.

"It was phenomenal … It was total camaraderie. People there for a common interest," she said.

People from as far away as England and Iowa and locals who had just met each other were talking and laughing,

"There wasn't a stranger in the bunch," Synder said.

Bishop Paul Zipfel, there as one of two independent witnesses that Guinness requires, was standing next to her when he told her, "This is the closest to Heaven on Earth I've ever been."

"Boy, I agree," Synder said she replied.

The Random Acts of Kindness group, which had called Synder out of the blue and volunteered to help with registration, passed out cocoa. And after the 1 p.m. event, people didn't want the moment to end; many were there until 3 p.m., taking part in snowball fights, making snow bunnies and making and drinking Random's cocoa.

Peace and good will and love.

Oh, and by the way, Synder said that if North Syracuse does happen to break the record, something bad may happen.

"I don't want to be nasty," she said.

But she said, if need be, there still will be time this year to pull together another snow angel event in Bismarck and break North Syracuse's new record before it means anything.

North Syracuse wouldn't even get into print. It would be Guinness time 2005 for Bismarck, again.

Zehner said he has great respect for what Synder and Bismarck accomplished. He said he considers Synder the "Grandmother" and Bismarck as the "Abner Doubleday" or the "George Washington" of the snow-angel movement.

But he gently suggested that Bismarck needs to be realistic. He knows Bismarck's current no-snow situation. North Syracuse, supplied daily by the Great Lakes, has 21/2 feet of white.

"They've got to get the snow first," he said. "I'm questioning whether they have the resources to pull it off."

Apparently, Bismarck has plenty of snow angels, while Syracuse has plenty of snow flakes.

Zehner and the community tried last year to break Bismarck's record. But North Syracuse - which with the rest of the Syracuse area has a population of about 500,000 - ended up with only about 700 angels. That was then. This year, Syracuse's angel effort has been hooked onto Syracuse's annual Winterfest event that draws about 50,000 people.

"I think they have what it takes," Synder said. But she hopes Syracuse rounds up independent witnesses of the same "impeccable character" as in Bismarck, which included the bishop and the state patrol head. She hopes Syracuse's documentation is just as reliable. Zehner teased that he'd put a call out to the cardinal.

But seriously.

"It would be in very bad taste to argue over something like angels," Zehner said.

Zehner said that Synder has been an inspiration. Even if his community doesn't break the Bismarck record, what Synder started brought 700 people together last year.

And who knows how many this year.

"She's helping to bring a community together," he said.

(Reach reporter Virginia Grantier at 250-8254 or at vgrantier@ndonline.com)