January 2017: The Transition of Power

     It is Martin Luther King Day. I attended a celebration today at North Park University. As I expected, the transfer of power from President Obama to President Trump influenced the speeches almost overshadowing remembering the man in whose honor we gathered. Given the contention the election has left in its wake and the extreme polarization in this country, this is no surprise.

     President Obama: Eight years ago, I voted for Barack Obama. I used Ronald Reagan’s yardstick from the 1980 Presidential Elections to make my choice. Reagan asked, “Ask yourself, 'Are you better off now than you were four years ago? '” I even modified it and asked as second question, “Is the country better off now than it was four years ago?”
     The answer to both these questions was a resounding “No!”
     We were at the beginning of a very serious economic crisis that would eventually be called The Great Recession. The economy began to quickly unravel in September of 2008. It quickly became a campaign issue. For me it was the only campaign issue. I was let go from my job at this very time. It was bad timing indeed. I have never recovered economically and I should be in the middle of the so-called disenfranchised segment of the population.
     I probably would have voted for the esteemed John McCain. I was in the most likely

The Onion still has a sense of humor.

demographic to vote for him. I did not. The main reason I did not was because McCain said there was nothing wrong with the economy. What?! Really!? He lost my vote then and there. Having Sarah Palin as his running mate did not help his case either.
     It was the first time I had voted for a Democratic Presidential candidate. He seemed saavy and was cleary very smart. I thought he woud be able to lead us through this quagmire.
     Note that I have, otherwise, voted for Democrats for House, Senate, and State offices. I believe in voting for the best person and not straight party tickets. I am kind of a centrist. I basically follow my cousin Davids tenet of being a fiscal conservative and wanting social justice.
     Obama was, of course, elected. I have oft used the analogy that he was given the keys to the that was going 150 mph a mere 100 yards from a brick wall. Yes, he was elected the President, the first black… er… half black President of these United States. Unfortunately, for those hoping for the Change they could Believe in, the only thing he and his administration could really focus on was the economic disaster he inherited. Sure, they had a mandate with power in both the House and Senate. Nonetheless, the economy was broken. It had to be fixed. That was Job 1. There were hard decisions to be made. In a crisis of that proportion, the crisis sets the agenda and action plan.
     His speeches in accepting the nomination, his victory speech on election night, and his inaugural address were excellent in my opinion. Barack Obama is a great speaker. He makes sense when he speaks. He is also a great interviewee. This past Sunday he had his last interview as President on 60 Minutes. He was authentic and a gentleman. He did not take the bait.
     I was never an Obama basher. I voted for him in 2008. In 2012, I used the same Reagan yardstick. The country was most definitely better off than it was in 2008. I did not feel I was, so after a bit of grappling I decided to go for Romney knowing it was going for a losing effort.

     I remember Obama’s first inauguration. It was a really cold January day. I am not in the habit of watching the inaugurations live. But this was an historic day for the country. Imagine this country electing a half white half black, who everyone just calls black, President. It was nothing any European country has ever done. So I tuned into the NPR coverage of the inauguration. Yes, I listened to it on the radio as I was off to Newell Rubbermaid’s offices in Oak Brook to sign my termination papers and review my severance etc. It all kind of tied in together in my little mind.

     President Trump: It is now the night before the inauguration.
     Like it or not, Donald Trump will be the 45th Presdient of the United States.
     I did not vote for Trump. I did not vote for Clinton either. I was dismayed that this great country this was the best we had to offer.
     I did vote. Yes… I did vote for Al Leppo. People say I wasted my vote. Maybe. But, there was no way Hilary Clinton was going to lose the State of Illinois. I could have voted for Donald Duck for all the difference it would have made.
     I am not a huge Hilary fan. I could not vote for her. Neither could I vote for Trump given the bombastic things he said and did during the campaign. I could only justify voting for one as it was a vote against the other. Forget it. I voted for the Libertarian.
     Clearly, everyone but Trump underestimated the sheer number of disenfranchised folks out there. When these folks applied the Ronald Reagan yardstick, they were not better off than they were four or eight years ago. Hilary was nowhere close to being the answer. She was the political establishment, the very folks the disenfranchised blamed, right or wrong, for the dimished country we became post recession.
     Along comes The Donald. He runs an unorthodox campaign promising to make America great again and… Voila! We have a populist candidate who defied all odds and got elected. The contrasts with Obama are striking and yet this is the transistion we are making this week. You cannot make this up.

     Term Limits and The Electoral College: There was talk this week that Obama would have been elected to a third term but for our term limits. Term limits are indeed a two edged sword. You hate them when a guy you love has to leave office, but you love term limits when a guy you loathe has to leave.
     The same kind of rationale applies to the Electoral College. Trump is on of the few Presidents to not win the majority of the vote. People are quite OK with the Electoral College when things go their way, and hate it, as the anti-Trump does in this past election. Hence, the feeling that “He is not my President.”

     He is not my President Movement: There will be people protesting in the inauguaration. There was a huge rally this evening, the night before the inauguration, in front of the Trump Plaza in NYC with an impressive list of NY celebrities and politicos speaking. It is all over the news. The protests at the inauguration itself might be unprecedented. People are upset to the core that The Donald got elected. They do not like it and are collectively going to express their displeasure. On Saturday, there is another huge Women’s March planned in several cities simulataneously which is probably more anti-Trump than anything else. I know several folks in Chicago who will be head downtown on Saturday to March. Trump has to be seeing all this. I wonder how he views this fervor.
     Trump has the lowest approval ratings for an incoming President since Abraham Lincoln. I guess Lincoln’s oppostion took exception to his anti-slavery stance. So, the anti-Trump crowd quote the low ratings and the Make America Great Again crowd compare him to Lincoln.
     Sixty Democrats are not attending the inauguration. I heard a talking head congressman today on NPR whose name or state I do not recall. He justification for not going is all the things Trump said and did during the campaign that would have destroyed the campaign of any other candidate. Merryl Streep gave the same kind of message when she received her lifetime achievement award from the Golden Globes. While her words are definitely old news today, the night before the inauguration, they were right on.

But there was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good; there was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh, and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out of my head, because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life. ~ New York Times

     Streep was refering to his imitiation of a handicapped reporter that happened to anger him. Then he denied what he did. In my book, that is not what I want our President to behave. He talked about the election as being rigged but when the only rigging appears to have come from Russian hackers to his favor, he is mum about it. He disparged a beauty queen in a twitter rampage. I do not approve of this kind of behavior from a candidate running for President let alone a Presdient elect. It discredits the office, the country, and our people. Obama never would have done that neither would have Reagan or Clinton. It is just unacceptable behavior.
     I am not against his tweeting per se. I am against the President of the United States criticizing people, well, like Meryl Streep, in an open forum like twitter.
     There was a quote floating around on Facebook. It was from Theodore Roosevelt.

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else." ~ Theodore Roosevelt Association

     I respect the Office of the President and whoever is elected. I may or may not agree with their policies but I respect the person and the office. I also believe in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and agree with the 26th President and criticize the President using our very precious right of free speech. This is the only way democracy can work.
     Many folks were not happy with the election Barack Obama in 2008. I heard several people say that “he was not their President.” Many more folks, I believe, shared that sentiment but called his early actions and policies trying to stem the Great Recession as socialist. Not quite communist, but most definitely a socialist. In his second term, most criticism was that he was the most ineffective President ever and comments along those lines. There was certainly a certainly a racial component to this. We can debate the degree of such, but it was most certainly there.
     Black folks looked at the election of Barack Obama a positive sign. It was a sign of hope as in the campaign slogan. With the election of Trump, many feel like the hope was taken away. The world was so impressed that we elected a black President, he even got a Nobel Peace Prize before he did anything.

     Polarization: Donald Trump did tweet something earlier today.

     I agree with Franklin Graham. We are polarized in the contry. I believe the main axes are race, disenfranchised or not, and liberal vs conservative. Most people can’t and don’t think in several factors (using the language of Design of Experiments from Statistics). People get even more confused when there is interaction between these factors. It has stifled the effectiveness of the our government since Obama was elected.
     Trump, however, is not helping. I am allowing a glimmer of hope to see if the office grounds him and once in office he can demonstrate to be a President of all the people.
     People love Trump or hate him. I am a centrist. I try to see the whole picture or use this all as a rationale to be wishy-washy (folks do criticize me for this). Obama has a madate when he was elected in 2008. Trump and his supporters believe they have a mandate with majorities in the House and Senate. The voting public, however, changed their minds and started electing Republicans as early as the 2010 midterm elections eroding Obama’s so-called mandate. I fully believe that the same will happen to Trump if people are not seeing what they want to see in 2018.

     Hrant Dink: This section has nothing to with Trump or Obama except their unwillingness to call what happened a Genocide. Nonetheless, I am compelled to make a few comments.
     Today is January 19, 2017. It is the ten year anniversary of his assassination of Hrant Dink outside the offices of the Agos newspaper. As of the time of this writing, there were no stories of this in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal.
     I was interested to see, post coup, if there were protests in Istanbul. Armenpress from Yerevan had a good article on commemorations in Yerevan and Istanbul including videos. I was a bit surprised to the number of protesters in Istanbul. It was nothing like the numbers 10 years ago, but it was something.
     To me, Hrant Dink is and should be honored as a Martin Luther King of Turkey. With Erdogan’s clamp down after the “coup,” this is not happening any time soon.

     Another blog post on Hrant Dink:  Five Years Later

January 2016: Chidem Inch - The Water Diviner

Ottoman 5th Army Positions April 1915

      I just finished watching the Russell Crowe film, The Water Diviner.  It debuted earlier this year and, typical of many movie promotions, I had no clue what the film was about.  I made a mental note to watch the film at some point simply because I like most Russell Crowe films.  Then I saw some articles in the Armenian press and posts on Facebook slamming the film.  Russell Crowe was called out for starring and directing a film about Gallipoli and ignoring any mention of the Armenians or the Armenian Genocide.   I made a point of not reading the articles until I saw the film. The film was released in December 2014 in Australia.  The European and US releases were in March and April coinciding, not by mere chance I presume, with the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide commemorations.

      If I wasn't Armenian or Greek, I would have probably enjoyed the film more.  The lay reviews on IMDB.com are quite favorable.  One would definitely want to see this film reading those reviews.  Yet, as Sylvia Angelique Alajaji says in her book, Music and the Armenian Diaspora:  "The 1915 Genocide has become the hinge on which all stories pivot."  For Armenians, that is how we approach this movie.  The Armenians weren't mentioned at all.  The Allies made their first landing on April 25, 1915.  Basically, this historic battle lasted the rest of 1915 simultaneously with the first seven months of the Armenian Genocide.  There were Greeks in the film,  But they were portrayed as invaders and their army as evil.  The Greeks were seen shelling an ancient castle in a battle much like the Turks destroyed the Parthenon (for real) by using it for target practice. The film conveniently ended before they had to deal with not talking about what happened in

Native Greek children standing by the bones, in 1919, of
soldiers who died during in Gallipoli in 1915 

Smyrna.
    There were many things about the movie that resonated with me.  First off, the story was compelling.  I liked the general plot.  I enjoyed two Turkish melodies that were part of the soundtrack.  I loved hearing an Aussie, or perhaps British officer, saying, "We lost the battle, but won the war."  It was interesting to see how the Australians, Brits, and Turks collaborated after the war to collect the vast number of skeletons and bones on the battle field.  Another Australian or British officer noted that this was the first war they tried to identify those slain and bury them in marked graves.  Previously, they dug large trenches and in which soldiers, horses, and mules were all thrown, covered in lime, and buried en masse.  Hopefully, these were not Hollywood fabrications.  It is hard to tell which parts of such movies are factual and which are from the imagination of screen writers.

     There was a scene at the end that takes place in what they call the "old church" in a village near or around Afyon (as best as I could tell from my watching of the movie).  This would have been a perfect time to provide the origins of the church and the lead Turkish character,  Major Hasan who was a most human and sympathetic character in the film from my perspective, might have given an explanation of what kind of church it was and what happened to the people that once worshipped there.  But, alas, it was just the "old church."
     The casualties at Gallipoli, Çanakkale in Turkish, were staggering.  Almost 57,000 Turkish troops died there.  The allied deaths were about the same number.  Approximately 107,000 Turks and 123,500 Allies were wounded.  It was a significant battle and both sides have rightfully commemorated it over the years, the way Americans, the English, French, and Germans commemorate D-Day.  War is indeed hell whether it was ethnic cleansing as in the Armenian Genocide or an epic brutal battle as in Çanakkale.  This film attempted to address the hellish nature of war through characters on both sides that were human

Captain Sarkis Terossian:  The first
person to sink a British battleship

and humane.  The major problem was with the exclusion.  
      They might have had an Armenian character in the film that served in Gallipoli.  The character might have been based on an Armenian artillery officer, Captain Sarkis Terossian, in the Turkish Army that was decorated and wrote a memoir of the Battle of Gallipoli.

In fact, Captain Sarkis Torossian was personally awarded medals for his courage by Enver Pasha, Turkey’s war minister and the most powerful man in the Ottoman hierarchy.
~ Robert Fisk, in a 5/12/13 Independent article.

     Çanakkale Savaşı (The Battle of Gallipoli) is an important part Turkish history.  Mustafa Kemal was a hero of the battle.  He led the post World War I national movement that resulted in the formation of the Republic of Turkey and the deification of Mustafa Kemal as Kemal Ataturk for founder of the Nation.  Because of this, Çanakkale is not viewed as the last great victory of the Ottoman Empire but rather the first victory that led to the founding of the Republic.  To me, as an Armenian, I see nothing more than a continuum that was first subjugation, second class overtaxed citizenship, Genocide, and, lastly, denial.  Mustafa Kemal was part of that continuum from Ottoman to Republic.  This includes, per the Fisk article, a concerted effort in Turkey claiming that  Sarkis Torosian's memoirs and participation in Çanakkale are pure fabrication... as were the thousands of Arabs and other minorities that fought in the Ottoman Army in that famous battle.
     Crowe is not the first Australian to only focus on Gallipoli and ignore the Armenian Genocide. I suppose the question is whether Australians are remiss by only focusing on this very important battle in the history of their nation? The article quoted from below is by Robert Manne who is "Emeritus Professor and Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at La Trobe University and has twice been voted Australia’s leading public intellectual." He claims his country and countrymen are remiss.

And yet, despite the fact that the Armenian Genocide was one of the great crimes of history; despite the fact that it took place on Ottoman soil during the precise months of the Dardanelles campaign; despite the fact that that campaign is regarded as the moment when the Australian nation was born, so far as I can tell, in the vast Gallipoli canon, not one Australian historian has devoted more than a passing page or paragraph to the relationship, or even the mere coincidence, of the two events. Concerning the Armenian Genocide, in the space of two large volumes on Gallipoli, Charles Bean is silent; Les Carlyon gives the issue three or four lines; John Robertson allows half a page. Alan Moorehead, in his mid-'50s classic, is unusual by devoting a full three pages to the Armenian Question.
~ Robert Manne, The Monthly Essays

     Note that these excerpts are from articles, well worth reading, written by non-Armenians.  The Water Diviner got hammered by film critics in much the same way... again by non-Armenians.  Here
are some references and excerpts.

Let me put it this way: If I made a film set in Germany or France or Poland in the 1940s that made no reference to the fate of Europe’s Jewish population in those years – if I appeared unaware that there ever were Jews in Europe, let alone what had become of them – how would that look? What sort of person would you judge me to be, and what sort of point would I seem to be making? Such is the question raised by “The Water Diviner,” a film largely made in Turkey that is being released in the United States on the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide – not the approximate anniversary but the precise anniversary, to the day. In a systematic campaign of deportation, starvation and mass murder that began in the spring of 1915, officials of the Ottoman Empire killed between 1 million and 1.5 million Armenians, an event that would later be called the first modern genocide and that shifted the course of 20th-century history, not least because it provided a template for the more ambitious schemes of Adolf Hitler. That event is never mentioned in “The Water Diviner,” not obliquely or indirectly or in any other way; you could easily watch the movie and never know that it happened.
~ Andrew O'Heir, Salon

Australian historian Professor Peter Stanley suggests that rather than a deliberate distortion, the problem with the film is most likely that Crowe, like his writers, has "entered a highly contested historical arena … without any idea of what he was getting into. His response was to simply roll over and accept the Turkish version."
Of course, the cynical might suggest that there may well have been commercial reasons for doing so.
The Anzac story presumably has little relevance to Greek or Armenian audience, but a retelling that is more sympathetic to the Turkish view was always likely to fare well in that market.
~ The Sydney Morning Herald

The moral issue at stake is neatly captured in the subtitle of Robertson’s recently published book on the genocide: ‘Who now remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?’ It was Hitler’s comment to his generals on the eve of the invasion of Poland urging them to show no mercy as there would be no retribution. It’s all part of ‘the other side of the Gallipoli story’ that Russell Crowe somehow didn’t get around to even hinting at.
~Anthony McAdam, The Spectator 

Nonetheless, if you strip the movie back to what works, and to what matters, it will, as I suggest, serve its purpose on Anzac Day. It should certainly not have been released yesterday, for that itself marked a harrowing centenary; to Armenians everywhere, April 24th refers to Genocide Remembrance Day, in memory of the many hundreds of thousands—as many as a million and a half, by some estimates—of their compatriots who died under Ottoman rule. Turkey continues vehemently to refute the charge of genocide, but the word is widely adopted, and was even used recently by Pope Francis. Whatever term you choose, why did the distributors of “The Water Diviner” risk insulting an entire community for the sake of one night’s takings at the box office? After all, here is a film that goes to some lengths to retreat from prejudice, to stand back, and to view distant events as an inextricable tangle of grievance and grief.
~Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

     It is worth reading any of these articles.  They all acknowledge the raw nerve that the memories of both Gallipoli and the Armenian Genocide touch to this day.  The Turks looked to have an international commemoration of Gallipoli/Çanakkale on the same day the Armenians were commemorating the start of the Genocide:  April 24.  They figured they would overshadow a part of their history they want the world to forget by making a big fanfare over an event in their history that they embrace.  World leaders were to attend the Gallipoli commemoration.  The event never happened.  World leaders bowed out when, apparently, they realized the ulterior motive of Ankara.  Sadly, Russell Crowe's movie was already produced.  I do not believe they did not have to release the film on April 24th in the US.  Either Crowe was complicit with or duped by his Turkish influencers.  I am going to believe the latter.  
     I had recently read Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul by Charles King. This book covers the history of Istanbul from the end of World War I until the mid 1950s. Professor King's book addresses the Armenian, Greek, Jewish, Russian, and other minority groups very well. While he could not possibly please all people who might read the book, I believe his coverage to be well balanced. The same cannot be said about The Water Diviner.

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All photos from Wikipedia.

January 2014: Brutalmente Frio!

I began to write a bloggy bit about the intense cold snap we had January 6^th through the 8th.  I never edited and finished the piece in time to post it when it was still frigid.  Thanks to Mother Nature I have another chance.  An equally cold spell occurred for January 27^th and 28^th.  Even though I had already posted something about Snow Days, I was compelled to make this piece on this very cold month in the era of global warming my monthly letter. 

January 6:  It was early December 1989.  I was in Louisville, Mississippi.  I was working for TRW Seat Belt Systems at the time and we had a plant in Louisville.  Louisville was a rural town and not an industrial or business center.  We used to stay at a vacation motel, not part of any chain, on small lake.  The rooms were modest but the restaurant was distinctively southern.  This motel and restaurant, whose name escapes me, most definitely had one leg one leg firmly rooted in the 1950s. 

It was unbelievably cold for that part of the country.  There was no talk of global warming back in those days.  If there was, I was oblivious to it.  Without internet we relied on the television and newspapers for the weather.  The local television news informed me that the temperature outside was 10 degrees.   After breakfast, at the checkout, the nice lady with a wonderfully pleasant Mississippi accent commented  "it is really cold weather for us down here, but I bet you are used to it up north where you live?"  I responded, "Ma'am, we may get a few more cold days in Detroit than you do down here but 10 degrees is cold for us too."

Today was the coldest day in Chicago for the past twenty years.  From sunrise to sunset the temperature did not get above -10 degrees.  The headlines of a local Spanish language newspaper simply stated:  Brutalmente Frio!  Yes, indeed.  It is brutally cold by any standard.  The weather is supposed to stay below zero until sometime on Wednesday. 

It snowed all weekend, but there was no snow today.  Yet, all schools were closed.  There was no mail delivery nor was there any refuse pickup. The roads were very lightly travelled because the television and internet urged everyone to stay home unless absolutely necessary.  People apparently listened.

I am not one to say we were of heartier stock back in my youth.  I only mention walking to school six miles both uphill in both directions through four feet of snow as an obvious joke to my students.  Yet, I do not recall missing school solely because of cold weather.  We would, of course, note the cold and then simply bundle and layer up more before going out. 

What freaked people out most was the wind chill which was reported to be between -25 to -60 degrees today.  There were reports that at these kinds of temperatures and wind chills, frostbite could begin in about 10-15 minutes.  While I did not test the frostbite theory, I did park in front of  a coffee shop and left the car without coat or gloves to go the twenty yards or so into the shop.  Yep... my hands were really cold when I got into the store.  Later, I heard a report that it was so cold that if you threw a glass of water into the air, it would turn into snow.  I had never heard of it being that cold ever before.  So, I tried it.  No snow.  The water did quickly freeze be only after being on the ground for a few seconds.  Supposedly I should have used boiling water.    I hope I do not have to wait twenty years to give this another shot. 

January 7:  What is the history of this wind chill factor?  There are many formulas for calculating what we call the wind chill factor or what is also called the wind chill equivalent.  The first formula was developed by a couple of scientists, Charles Passel and Paul Siple, working in Antarctica.  The conducted experiments on how long it took water to freeze based on initial temperature of the water, the ambient temperature, and the average wind speed.   I can only assume they used regression to develop an equation.  Their initial work was heat loss expressed in watts per surface area.  Other scientists built off their model to calculate an equivalent temperature with no wind.  The formula has been tweaked a few times over years.

Weather services began reporting wind chills in the mid-1960s.   That is exactly when I recall hearing it and everyone being terrified by the hyperbole.  Since then, on really cold days weathercasters have been reporting both the temperature and the wind chill equivalent.  Lately, I have noticed a newer habit of weathercasters only reporting the wind chill temperature.  I am not sure I like this change and I am also certain I will have little say in changing how cold weather temperatures are reported.  Source for the history of the wind chill factor:  Wind Chill: Love It or Hate It, The Term is Here to Stay.

It has been twenty years since we had temperatures this cold.  Will it be even longer until we see it again due to global warming?  Maybe, and there is no scientific basis for this, we should be calling it is climate disruption wherein we see the temperatures gradually increase but also see more and more extremes in terms of temperatures and storms.  It seems just seeing the bigger hurricanes, longer tornado seasons with more vicious storms, torrential rains and floods, tsunamis, early springs, mild winters, following by record setting brutal winters.  It seems more complicated than what most of us believe global warming. 

Yesterday in New York City, it was 50ish degrees.  It will hit a low of 7 this evening and be over 50 by the weekend.  It was -15 yesterday in Chicago.  Today it was -4, it will be in the 30s over the weekend and the forecast is calling for sleety rain.  If you ask me, those are wild swings in temperatures.

It will be interesting to see how the rest of the year develops.

January 24:  Shortly after this throw back cold spell, people around here do what people do.  They started complaining about the cold and wishing for summer. 

I am not complaining.  I am really enjoying this frigid month.  It reminds me of winters I experienced growing up.  It feels right. I am less happy when we have the winters that aren't really winters.  Those winters are extended falls that then morph directly into spring. 

This is not to say that I have not gotten weary of winter in years past.  I recall a couple winters growing up where it seemed like it was gray and overcast for like a month.  It was dank, damp, and dark.  I definitely wanted those winters to end. 

For me, there is no need to fed up with winter.  It has snowed.  It has been really cold.  But, the really cold days were sunny and the skies were clear.  It was very nice.  Furthermore, it is the 24th of January.  March is only 34 days off.  Spring is 55 days away.  It is almost time to think about getting my bicycles tuned up. 

Oddly and not very well publicized, this past Tuesday, January 21st, was Chicago's Annual Winter Bike to Work day.  Really?  It had snowed that evening.  There were a couple of inches of snow on the ground.  The car commute took over an hour when it is normally 30 minutes.  Even worse, it was five degrees.  I could imagine taking any kind of bike ride in those conditions.  I did not see any bike riders until I walked to the Starbucks across from North Park University.  A young man came out of the store with a cup of coffee to his bike leaning against the wall.  I asked how he would ride in these conditions while carrying a cup of coffee.  The young fellow said he was planning to walk.  He was a student at the Northside College Preparatory High School about a half-mile from where we were.  When I asked if he was participating in the Bike to Work Day said this was the first he had heard about it.  He commented that he rides his bike to school every day; I guessed out of necessity.

At the campuses I frequent, I do not see students in sandals or shorts this winter.  Not this year.  Everyone is bundled up.  I love it.  Heavy coats, layers, hats that cover the ears, and insulated gloves are the uniform of the day.  Folks from warmer climes are wrapped in scarfs with only a slit open for their eyes.  We have had several snow storms varying from a few inches to outright blizzards. 

January 23:  In a white out this week in the lake effect region at the south end of Lake Michigan by Michigan City, there was a horrible accident involving 40 cars and eighteen wheelers.  Three people were killed.  It took the authorities more than 24 hours to clear the road for traffic.  I had read about such accidents in Alps.  I have never heard of such an accident in the US. 

It was a horrible accident.  While we are closing schools because of the cold, drivers do not heed the advice when told to get stay off of the roads. 

January 27-28:  Schools were all closed including the two colleges I teach at.  There was no appreciable snow, but still the schools were closed.  I imagine that school kids were enjoying their unanticipated time off.  Again the schools were closed because of the brutal cold.  The temperatures did not get above 5^o F and were as low as -115^o F. 

I have to admit.  I enjoyed the unanticipated time off and was certain I was going to get a lot done with the windfall of free time.  Sheepishly, I have to admit that I did not get that much done.

I did redo the science experiment that didn’t quite work out.  I put boiling water in a mug, went outside and threw the water up into the cold air.  Voila, a large part of the water turned to a very fine snow.  Cool.

January 29:  The Chicago Tribune had an online poll:  Is this Chicago’s worst winter?  They asked folks to rate select the worst winter from this year, 2011, 1985, 1983, 1982, and 1979.  Because people are feeling the here and now more than remembering the then and when, 2014 was the clear winner in this ad hoc poll.  

This poll made me curious.  I looked at the average January temperatures in Chicago from 1950 to 2014.  The average temperature was 15^o F this month.  This is the coldest January since 1985 when the average monthly temperature was also 15^o F.  In the 64 year span, there were four Januaries when the average temperature was colder than we experienced this year: 1982, 1979, 1977, and 1963 when the average temperatures were 12^o F, 13^o F, 11^o F, and 12^o F respectively. 

    So this is the coldest January in 29 years.  It is clear why the Chicago Tribune Poll turned out like it did. Approximately half of the people alive today weren’t born then.  The half that were, probably do not remember those cold Januarys in the 70s and 80s as the this year’s which is front and center in our consciousness.

Since I collected this data, I wanted to see if global warming was at play, so I ran a regression.  The slope of the regression line was .044 ^o F which means the model says that the temperature is rising .044 ^o each year.  That is not a lot but it is an increase.  Further analysis shows that this liner model is only accounting, however, for a paltry 2.4% of the variation in average temperatures.  I am, therefore, not very excited about this model.  

Let's see what February has in store for us...