January Reflective

 

goinswriter.com

With this bloggy bit, I have posted every day this month.

I set out to post every day at the beginning of the month.  I did not announce my attention at the beginning as I did in December of 2020 when I posted every day that month as well as January 2021.  I am glad I did it and am contemplating doing it again in February, but I am not sure.  It is a lot of work both coming up with topics that interest me, doing the research if some is required, and then actually writing the piece.  Perhaps, this will be my obsession if and when I fully retire.

This blog, This Side of Fifty:  A Monthly Letter of Musings and Meanderings, is not really a monthly letter.  This writing project did start out as a monthly letter in February 2004.  The letter was sent to family and friends by e-mail until 2009 when I moved everything over to this blog.  In September of 2009, I posted three times at which point the blog became neither monthly nor a letter.

I do continue to muse and meander.  I wouldn’t change that for the world.  The few friends that I know with blogs are more focused.  John Torosian has an excellent wine review blog:  The Wine Raconteur.  Ara Topouzian’s equally excellent blog, Hye Times:  A Journey to Preserve the Past, focuses on the Armenian music of the style he performs and loves.  I sometimes think about focusing on one theme, but that is not me.  When my friend, Marilyn Zavidow, came up with the title, I immediately loved and felt connected with the musing and meandering part.  That is my theme, to write about whatever catches my interest or attention.  Part of me seeks a holistic view and understanding of this thing we call life.

Because of this not every post resonates with everyone.  I am not sure everything I write about resonates with me!  Some posts downright confuse or bewilder some folks.  People will suggest a topic they think I should write about.  Sometimes, it is a serious suggestion.  Sometimes, the suggestion is a facetious jab.  When I first started, I was quite worried, sensitive, well let’s call it was.  I was simply afraid of hearing any criticism.  I do believe that I would have started a writing regimen earlier but for that fear.

The funny thing is that after I got into it and found my musing and meandering perspective and voice, I am way less afraid and sensitive of getting feedback.  To paraphrase my late friend Angel, “If you like it, read it.  I you don’t like it, don’t read it.”  Certainly, I would love to have a huge audience.  I would love for my musings or meanderings, for that matter, to go viral to the point where I would be referred to as an influencer.  I am a really long way from that kind of audience.  But that is not why I write.

I write because I want to.  I write because I need to… even if I am writing just to myself. 

Let’s see what February brings.  For sure it marks the start of the nineteenth year of this writing regimen.

Five-Year Plans

 

idtechex.com

Back in the day when I was first learning about the Soviet Union, I was impressed when I first heard about their famous Five-Year Plans.  Google provided a very concise definition for the Five-Year Plan:  “(especially in the former Soviet Union) a government plan for economic development over five years. The first such plan in the Soviet Union was inaugurated in 1928.”

Even as a kid, I realized that these plans, though bold and ambitious, were easy to make and hard to execute.  One of the big differences in Soviet style communism and the free enterprise system of the US, was that our style of competition made for better products and services that propelled society forward at a demonstrably faster pace the Soviet system.  I have noted for years, until the demise of the Soviet Union, that they were perpetually “in the first year of a five-year plan.” 

Per Britannica.com, the first Five-Year Plan (1928-1933) focused on developing heavy industry led to a “drastic fall in consumer goods.”  The second (1933-37), emphasized collective agriculture led to famine.  The third (1928-1942) and the fourth (1946-53) were concerned about building armaments and military capability.  Given their performance in World War II and into the Cold War, I have to admit they were moderately successful with these efforts but again at the expense of their populace in terms of consumer goods including food manufacturing and distribution.  The Soviets inspired China to adopt the Five-Year Plan in 1953 focused on developing the industrial base.  It was considered a success given that China was essentially at zero in that regard.  After they started their second Five-Year Plan, they launched a parallel strategic initiative they called the Great Leap Forward which led to chaos, mass incarcerations, and famine.

The reason for writing about this today is because of an article in Time, China’s New 5-Year Plan is a Blueprint for the Future of Meat.  China announced a five-year strategic initiative to make the acceleration to cultivated meats and plant based eggs a national priority.  We eat a lot of meat in this country.  China, with a population three times ours, eats a lot more.  Per the article:

The U.N.’s International Panel on Climate Change is calling for a reduction in global meat consumption to help reduce climate-warming gasses. Yet global demand for meat is set to nearly double by 2050, according to the World Resources Institute, particularly in nations with a growing middle class, like China. Per capita meat consumption has tripled since the late 1980s in China, and today the country consumes 28% of the world’s meat, including half of all pork.

Cultivated meat is real meat but grown from cells, some articles say stem cells, of animals.  It is supposed to be healthier because the factories involved can better control the environment and minimize food born illnesses more easily than the feed-lot/slaughterhouse methods used today.  Cultivation would also eliminate the need for antibiotics. 

In talking about reducing greenhouse gases, we have to consider the sheer volume of animals raised for food.  In 2019, the EPA estimated that 10% of greenhouse gas emissions in the US came from agriculture.  A significant portion of this is from animal flatulence and defecation. 

Another factor is how much plant-based food and water is needed to produce one pound of beef.  If you do an internet search, the numbers are all over the place.  On one end, Agfoundation.com claims it takes 2.5 pounds of grain to produce a pound of beef.  On the other end, EarthSave.org states, “It takes 2,500 gallons of water, 12 pounds of grain, 35 pounds of topsoil and the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline to produce one pound of feedlot beef.”  I suspect the answer is somewhere in between.  I assume that water and other resources will be needed to produce cultivated meat.  No one is really cultivating meat as yet, but The Good Food Institute reported significant reductions in land-use and pollution.  The land could be used to grow more grains and vegetables for human consumption.

 

Agfoundation.com

 

Will China be successful? Their recent track record in their more market drive approach to communism is much better than their first five-year plans were.  This five-year plan is ambitious and we shall have to wait and see the outcomes.  I have been advocating that the US should consider adapting a bit of the Chinese approach to capitalism where the state and industry collaborate to set objectives of which market segments and industries they want to dominate and then they go after it as shared objectives.  We seem less determined in this regard.

There is a darker side in China as stated in an article in today’s New York Times, Living by the Code: In China, Covid-Era Controls May Outlast the Virus.  The Chinese developed an excellent phone-based software to track people with the disease with passes granted to travel.  The article suggests the one-party government will and perhaps already is using the same software to track dissidents and critics of the government. 

I still think we need a bit more national strategy, but it would have to be very well managed and have safeguard that err on the side of free enterprise.

Potpourri: Mining Evernote

 

Mamma's Liquid Love

It has been a while since I posted one of these potpourri posts.  This late lazy wintery hunkered down at home Saturday seems like a perfect day to do just that.

Evernote is an app I use often, almost daily.  Like Microsoft’s OneNote, it is a cloud-based storage for organizing and managing notes, tasks, and archiving any variety of digital items.  I use it mostly for archiving.  I love to clip and save articles for use in my online class discussions.  I also clip and save articles of general interest.  As you might expect, you can create folders, called Notebooks in Evernote, and tags to better organize things. 

I also use Evernote for clipping finances.  I store images of checks (yes, I still write checks on occasion), screen shots of e-banking transactions, and keeping track of tax-deductible donations.  I have another Notebook, Obituaries, where I save the death notices and obituaries of family and friends.  I tried using for notetaking but I really prefer the Leuchttrum 1917 and handwriting my notes using my favorite pens.

This version of potpourri features two articles I have clipped in a Notebook I have titled, Blog Ideas and Research.  As I run across articles, blogs, new stories on topics that interest or intrigue me, I clip them into this notebook.   Here is a taste of some of the items in that notebook that never became a theme of a post on their own.

Breast Milk Jewelry:  I was thumbing through the Sunday New York Times on December 27, 2021.  There was an article, ‘People Want Jewelry With Meaning’: How Breast Milk Became a Gem.  It caught my eye and after a short read, I clipped it.  The article highlighted a company in New Jersy, mammasliquidlove.com. Momma’s Liquid Love takes a mother’s breast milk and creates an opal-like stone that is set in a ring or pendant as a lasting memory of breast feeding their children.  The jewelry looks very nice and might be a thoughtful memento for some women. 

This article caught my eye because in my February 2005 letter, I wrote about novel new options for a final resting place for deceased family members which included:  Have their ashes launched into space and having their ashes pressed into synthetic diamonds.  Somehow, I related the two cremation ash examples to this idea of turning breast milk into jewelry.  I was not alone, the article on making jewelry from breast milk referred to the option of turning cremation ashes into synthetic diamonds as well.

What is the demand for breast milk pendants or cremation ash solitaires?  The only thing I could find was that 800-900 cremation ash diamonds were created by a Swiss company Algordanza.  Algordanza not only presses ashes but as it turns out hair into diamonds.  They require half a kilogram of ashes and charge ~$3,500 for a .3 kt rough cut diamond.  The price varies with size and cut.  Let’s assume the average transaction is $5,000.  They reported in 2014 that they were making 800-900 of these diamonds a year.  Rounding that up to 1,000 diamonds a year selling at $5,000 per diamond, a conservative guesstimate on their revenues from this business would be $5 million per year.  Not bad at all.

Inventors who Regret their Inventions:   In November of 2020, I clipped a bloggy bit from Mental Floss but offered up on Pocket Worthy titled 10 Inventors Who Came to Regret Their Creations.  Of the ten, only two of them are noteworthy and both related to weapons.

With regard to the development of the atom bomb, Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Los Alamos Labs, said these words after the first test:

 

We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed... A few people cried... Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form, and says, "Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.

The atom bomb was based on the theoretical research of Albert Einstein.  He was a signatory on a letter of physicists to President Roosevelt at the onset of WWII encouraging him to fund research to develop the bomb. The pshysicists believed Germany was already working on it.  Later Einstein said, “"Had I known that the Germans would not succeed in producing an atomic bomb, I would have never lifted a finger."

Mikhail Kalishnikov designed the AK-47 assault rifle for the Soviet Union.  This simple relatively cheap weapon became the most popular assault rifle ever and thus responsible for more deaths than any other assault rifle.   In a letter to the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, he wrote, “I keep coming back to the same questions. If my rifle claimed people’s lives, can it be that I…, an Orthodox believer, am to blame for their deaths, even if they are my enemies?"

There are a lot more of examples of articles I have clipped that were interesting but did not become full blog post on their own.  They are, however, perfect for this Potpourri category. 

I shall have to do this again.

 

evernote.com

 

Infrastructure Irony

cnn.com

Today, President Biden went to Pittsburgh.  Per TribLive.com, he was going there “to tout the recently passed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill with a stop planned at Carnegie Mellon University’s Mill 19 research and development center in Hazelwood.”  With the tensions between Russia and Ukraine, the faltering stock market, and the ongoing iffiness of the pandemic, the President’s approval rating is low and he needs both to show more dynamic  leadership and to generate good PR.  This visit to Pittsburgh is the start of this new strategy of Biden getting out and meeting with the American people.

On the drive to the university this morning, I heard a report on NPR’s Morning Edition that a snow-covered bridge collapsed in Pittsburgh a few hours before the President was supposed to arrive.  The bridge collapsed just after 6 am and luckily schools had a delayed start and traffic was at a minimal on a road that is traversed by about 15,000 vehicles per day.  Twelve people were injured but, thankfully, none seriously.  Four cars were on the bridge at the time of collapse.   A natural gas line was broken but the flow was turned off before there was any ignition or explosion.  The reports said all say that the bridge was snow covered.  Snow and ice can certainly be heavy, but my guess is that is not the main contributor to the bridge collapsing. 

It is incredibly ironic to have a bridge collapse the on the same day in the same city the President is visiting to speak with infrastructure being one of the key topics of the speech.  This is fodder for the conspiracy theorists out there. 

Pittsburgh is set in a very hilly area.  The Alleghany and Monongahela Rivers meet there and become the Ohio River.  This makes Pittsburgh a city of bridges.  There are over 700 bridges in Pittsburgh.  That is more than any other city in the world.  There are another 500 or so in Alleghany County outside the Pittsburgh city limits.  179 of the bridges in Pittsburgh and the rest of the county have poor ratings which has mean they have an unacceptable probability of failing as this one did.

We have been talking about the need to address our infrastructure for years.  Before President Trump no administration did much about it.  President Trump sounded like he was going to do something but didn’t get to it.  President Biden actually got legislation passed. 

I hope we do this and I hope even more this is only the beginning of a larger transformation.

I believe we have to put our differences aside and invest on this country.  We don’t need to be the policemen of the world.  They really don’t care for or appreciate when we do it anyway.  We need to invest in our infrastructure and the education of our own people.  We can do it much more strategically and effectively than we do it today.  I would like to see better roads and schools.  I would love to see our education system become one of the best in the world with a much truer focus on STEM.  I want us to be a center of innovation and a manufacturing center of excellence in the industries we deem as strategic.  We do this by including everyone in the redefined American dream minimizing poverty and improving the lot of everyone.

Am I dreaming sure?  For sure!  Everything great has to start with a great and bold vision.  Will it be easy to do?  Of course not.  Great and bold visions require great, bold, and unified effort to be realized. 

It always starts with a dream.  I can have a dream… can’t I?

Contagion: MEME and Omicron

 

It is Thursday night.  I am supposed to be at practice with the Middle Eastern Music Ensemble of the University of Chicago.  We were to have our second concert of our season, the Persian Concert, on Saturday February 19.  We have been meeting but over Zoom rather than having live rehearsals.  We have several pieces selected but have only been able to review them on our Zoom sessions and then practice on our own.

It is impossible to practice with two musicians on Zoom due to latency.  So there really is no practice.  It is certainly fun to see everyone and interact.  But, talking is not the interaction we want.  We want to play music and want to play together.  It was good to have a live performance, the Turkish Concert, this past November (Contagion:  Music in Pandemic Times). 

In our call tonight, it was announced that we would not be having the Persian Concert in February.  We are not entirely sure of what we will do.  There are two options we are considering and exploring with the University to secure the venues for the concert dates.  One option is two have a smaller group Persian Concert on March 12.  The other is to have a combined Persian-Arab Concert over Memorial Day Weekend.  I guess a third option is to do both.  It will be a week or six before we have clarity.

The University is being very careful as well they should.  They want to keep the students and the community safe.

It is a major effort to get down to Hyde Park for rehearsals.  In part, it is nice not to trek down there for practice and get home late.  But if we had practice, the trekking down there and back is a small thing compared the fun and satisfaction of being together, practicing, and then playing the actual concert.  As I have written in other posts, it has been one of the best avocational activities I have ever been involved with.

The sense on the call is the same frustration and Covid weariness everyone is feeling these days.  Like the rest of the country, we are hoping to the pandemic to fizzle out soon.  But, we will dutifully follow the rules set forth by the University.   Omicron seems to be waning, but the rate of decrease is not clear as we have only just crested.  Our director, Wanees Zarour, has prepared a fully orchestrated midi files for us to practice with.  I will do this but, again, it is not the same.

Everything I do or don’t do is because I am following the guidance of the state, the city, and both North Park University and the University of Chicago.  Is this the right or wrong thing to do?  Well, I have been conservative in behavior for almost two years and am sticking with it.  Why?  Because I am sticking with it. 

I talk with people from other parts of the country and see friends on social media that are basically living their lives on vacation and at larger social gatherings mostly without masks.  Some get the virus, and if they are fully vaxed and boosted, they stay home for a few days and move on.  Who’s right?  While I am sticking with the conservative approach, I am thinking more and more… who knows.

The Great Resignation

 

A large contributor to the supply chain shortage and, for sure, the service disruptions is the lack of workers.  The phenomena we are experiencing is called the great resignation.  This is a bit of a mystery to me because it seems like just few years ago we were more worried about unemployment and now it is labor shortages. 

People are simply leaving their jobs.  Some are leaving for other jobs, some, if they can, are leaving the job market entirely i.e. they are retiring.  We know the is a projected decrease in the college age student population in the next five years.  Maybe we a lot of people retiring and not enough people entering the job market. 

Consider the trucking industry.  There is currently a shortage of 80,000 truck drivers in this country according the American Trucking Associations as reported on trucking.org.  This is the biggest gap ever in the long-haul trucking industry.  No wonder the container ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles were backed up last month.  Whatever the inefficiencies of port operations, they couldn’t move the containers out of the yard as fast as they could unload ships. 

Part of the reason given for the driver shortage is that the high average age of the current driver base.  They are retiring at a pace quicker than new drivers are entering the profession.  Other factors include the fact that women make up only 7% of drivers and the long-haul driver lifestyle conflicts with family life.  The report anticipates the shortage to be 160,000 by 2030.  It seems highly unlikely we stand around dumbfounded for eight years and allow this to happen.  One solution could be driverless vehicles if we can master the technology including the AI to make that happen in a safe and reliable manner.  Another solution is the simple economic principle of supply and demand.  If the demand for drivers exceeds the supply, the industry simply has to pay more.

Restaurants, unable to hire enough staff, have curtailed hours and cut their menus down simply to serve their customers properly.  An article in Business Insider further supported the boomer retirement factor for the labor shortage. 

Ed Rensi, who served as the fast-food chain's CEO until 1997, said during an interview with Fox Business on Tuesday that the number of people starting to retire has been overlooked in the conversation about labor challenges nationwide. As Rensi pointed out, the oldest baby boomers are now in their mid-70s, which means even some of their kids are getting close to retirement.

 

"The retirement numbers are going to start to accelerate, and there's going to be a lot of upward mobility because they're leaving the workforce, which is going to leave a shortage at the bottom end," Rensi said. "And, boy, we're feeling it big time at restaurants, barbershops, day-care centers. It's a nightmare."

There had been a trend of folks staying in the labor market longer, past 65 years old, to maybe 70.  The recent gains in the stock market and the stress brought on by two years of pandemic has many boomers deciding to retire.   A survey quoted in the article showed that people are aiming to retire earlier again at an average age of 62.  This should further exacerbate the problem.

So, what do we do?  That is the multibillion-dollar question.  Automation will certainly cover some of the gap.  More automated check-outs in retail and restaurants will help as will kiosk or cellphone-based ordering in all but the swankiest restaurants.  There is another possible consequence, the more we need people to fill and do jobs, the more we will have to pay more to fill the jobs and that will increase our cost of living.  The other thing that will certainly help is to open immigration to fill the entry level jobs in the service, manufacturing, and transportation industries.  This could help resolve the illegal immigration issue.

Who would’a thunk?

 

trucking.org

 

The New Great Train Robbery

 

cnn.com

I had not expected to write about this topic again having just written about it thirteen days ago.  I was motivated by an article in the Wall Street Journal about a major train heist in Los Angeles:  Train Robberies Are a Problem in Los Angeles, and a Blame Game Has Ensued - WSJ.

The photos are unbelievable.  It looks like a tornado hit the train.  Clearly thousands of packages were open, and those with valued content were stolen leaving nothing but dunnage at the scene of the crime.  The article reported that “Union Pacific has seen a 160% jump in criminal rail theft in Los Angeles since December 2020.”  Since the start of the pandemic, they have incurred $5 million in losses. 

It seems there has always been railroad thefts but until recently, it was mostly opportunistic where a few might break into a rail car or inter-modal container and steal what they could carry off.  The photos in the article show a level of theft that is well beyond opportunistic.  This was a well-planned, well executed, operation that had to have a relatively large team working the heist with getaway trucks to haul their plunder.  I wonder what they do with the goods.  Do they sell them on e-bay, to smaller non-chain boutiques, sell them local marketplaces like Facebook?  They may sell them to shady exporters who ship them to countries where products are more easily sold to bona fide retailers with no questions asked?  The thieves might be part of such an export ring. 

I was so shocked and amazed by the photos, I posted one on Facebook.  One trashed Governor Gavin Newsom for only apologizing “but not for the theft, but instead for the thieves.” Another friend said, “Mind blowing,” which was my first reaction.  An old Colgate colleague commented:

 

Talk about sliding backwards…. I thought train robberies pretty well ended late 1800’s. But goes to show what happens when you ignore crime because you are afraid you will upset your voters.

 

This was my second thought.  Train robberies?  Really?  They were the stuff of old Western movies.  The classic 1903 silent film, The Great Train Robbery, is considered the first American action film.  Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid were train robbers.  I too thought they ended in the 1800’s.  But here we are today with a modernized version.

How do we mitigate these kinds of spectacular crimes?   I would include the flash mob smash-and-grab robberies of high-end luxury good boutiques that seem equally well-planned and well executed.  Certainly, there will have to be some investment in systems and personnel by the retailers, train companies, and local authorities.  Union Pacific already has an internal security force of 200 men which sounds ample but not when that force covers the entire United States.  What would a luxury retailer with 500 stores scattered around the country have to invest to protect their stores from these blitzkrieg thefts.  I would imagine the investment would be considerable and maybe less than the retailers and train companies are actually losing making them reluctant to spend the money.

Thirteen days ago, I wrote, “Crime is likely to be an issue in the mid-term elections later this year.”  I am even more convinced of that now.

Alter Ego

 

I just watched a movie, Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016), starring Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher.  The Reacher character is a good guy, a real good guy, with amazing warrior and martial arts skills.  Beyond that, he has the intellect and deductive powers of Sherlock Holmes.  He is a superhero without superpowers.  Reacher was a major in the Military Police that left the service and dropped off the grid.  He is a nomad always looking to right wrongs and looking into suspicious activities that end up putting Reacher in dangerous situations because he has encroached on the well-funded and nefarious operations of some really bad people.

There are two Jack Reacher movies.   The first was made in 2012 and also stars Tom Cruise.  It is simply and cleverly titled Jack Reacher.  Tom Cruise is perfect for this role.  This fits his “does all his own stunts” style of action hero acting.  There is some buzz about another movie but probably not starring Cruise as one article I read claimed he has probably aged out of the role.  I think he is the Tom Brady of action hero acting.  I wouldn’t have counted him out.  But what do I know, Amazon Prime is launching a series called Reacher which premiers February 4 of this year starring  Alan Ritchson.  I suppose I will be checking it out.

I love these kind of heros.  I want to be one of them.   It is why I read the Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum books.  Jack Reacher, Jack Ryan, and Jason Bourne are my types of guys.  I enjoy reading about their exploits.  I used to read the Ludlum books on the train into Manhattan, then walking to the office I would have my eyes open and my senses on high alert looking for someone who might be following me or looked a bit out of place.  I was ready to duck or roll and come up shooting or fighting at any given moment.

It is not really an alter ego but more of a desired alter ego.  I was never the ducking and rolling sort at any time in my life.  Now, it is impossible.  In my prime, I would have probably hurt myself.  As for the amazing martial arts skills, we can lump that together with the ducking and rolling.  The closest thing to a sensei I ever had was a couple of amazing bosses that were great leaders, coaches, and mentors.

Given the popularity of these movies and books, I am guessing I am not alone in this.  Though, I have not discussed this with any of my friends, there must be a lot of people who harbor the same desired alter ego.  I guess people keep these fantasy alter egos to themselves.  In my case, I know it is about the mix of desire to be trim and to be faster, quicker, and more agile than I ever imagine.  I suspect others relate in somewhat the same manner.  The beauty of this genre of novels and movies is we get a wee bit of the simulated experience.  For the vast majority of us, that is enough.

This is not the first time I have addressed this topic.  I wrote about it in 2011 in a post called Secret Agent Man.  As I said in that piece, “it is pure Walter Mitty.”

I saw the first Jack Reacher movie a few years ago.  It wasn’t until today that it occurred to me to do an internet search to see if the movies were based on Jack Reacher books.  Well, there are like twenty-two written by Lee Childs (the alter ego of James Dover Grant) that have been around for 25 years and wildly popular.  And to think, I want to be a secret agent…

 

  

Fifty Words for Snow

 

It is a beautiful, peaceful, Sunday morning.  It snowed overnight.  The is a 3-4 inch blanket of pristine whiteness covering and hushing the landscape.  As it is only 13 degrees and given the way the snow wisps with each little gust of wind, I can tell the snow is powdery.  This made me think about the different kinds of snow be it wet snow, dry snow, icy sleety snow, powdery snow, fine snow as it is falling, big clumpy snow falls, and whatever else the atmosphere might serve up.  I remember an adage about Eskimos or indigenous peoples in Greenland having like fifty words for snow.

I am not sure when I first heard this.  But I clearly recall being impressed by hearing it and then trying to figure out if this were true and if it were true… why?  I did hear this well before the whole global warming a thing.  Winters were tougher and more brutal then.  Then I thought further back in time when Eskimos lived off the land which was frozen, icy, snowy, mostly night, for like half to two-thirds of the year.  Snow was definitely a significant part of their lives.  It makes total sense that they would have more words to explain the nuances of different types of snows and snowstorms. 

A century ago, on June 11, 1922, a silent film documentary called “Nanook of the North” was released.   You can watch it on YouTube.  It showed the rigors of Eskimo or Inuit life in the wilderness.  It was the first glimpse of a lifestyle most people were unfamiliar with.  There might have been scholarly, anthropological, works about the Inuits, but the documentary presented the Eskimo/Inuit way of life to the public.  This way of life was unchanged for centuries but was quickly fading away.   People were enamored with the documentary.  Nanook became a household name.  Whenever people were bundled up with scarves, coats, mittens, and furry hats to the point where only their eyes were showing, people would say, “You look like Nanook of the North.”  This was even referenced in the movie White Christmas by Danny Kaye. 

A New Yorker article from 2004, Nanook and Me, shows that the famed documentary was more staged than depicting real life.  The Inuits “had long since stopped walrus-hunting” and that important segment was staged.  Nanook and family built and igloo but as the dark and cramped interiors of these snow block shelters were not conducive to filming, a cutaway igloo (a set) was created to film those scenes.  Through the modern lens of over criticizing everything especially older works such as “Nanook of the North”, the director Robert Flaherty has been criticized for the scripted and staged parts of his groundbreaking documentary.  In his own words from The New Yorker, “What I want to show is the former majesty and character of these people, while it is still possible—before the white man has destroyed not only their character, but the people as well.”  I am giving Flaherty a little slack as his documentary was engaging and gave a reasonable glimpse into a fascinating past.

So, are there fifty Eskimo or Inuit words for snow?

Yes and no.  I found a paper, Counting Eskimo words for Snow:  A citizen’s guide, by Anthony C. Woodbury of the University of Texas at Austin.  As the author is a professor of linguistics, I will go with his take.  And his answer includes lexemes which is basically a set of related words compounded in meaning through inflection.  It seems like the Inuit language and dialects uses a dizzying array of inflections.

Thus English has a single lexeme speak which gives rise to inflected forms like speaks, spoke, and spoken. It's especially important to count lexemes rather than words when talking about Eskimo languages. That's because they are inflectionally so complicated that each single noun lexeme may have about 280 distinct inflected forms, while each verb lexeme may have over 1000! Obviously, that would put the number of snow words through the roof very quickly.

Thanks for clearing that up, Professor.

He also taught me that the Eskimos or Inuits as they prefer to be called extended from parts of Alaska through Northern Canada all the way to parts of Greenland.

I will go out now and enjoy the Robert Rymanesque, lexemic, fresh fallen, wind wispy, and powdery snow.  I will bundle up like Nanook.  If I see any walruses, I will leave them be.