Good morning, all. I don't know how much snow we finally got. I would guess a little over 20 inches. Now we have to dig out. It looks like our city's snow removal has been effective and we had no dramatic pile of motorists stranded for hours in the snow as we did in that big snow in December. I am sure the world knows all about the mess on Lake Shore Drive over the last two days. I am very annoyed with the local news coverage of that incident and I don't think the Chicago officials have anything to apologize for--unless a lack of prescience is now a personal fault. The way the reporters have behaved one would think they acted with a singular disregard for public safety by not closing a major north-south thoroughfare at the first hint of snow. I don't know what it is about journalism today but I it seems to me that it lacks any common sense of balance. It is too bad so many drivers got caught in the mess but their situation was simply bad luck and, perhaps, bad driving. But we are so used to taking our little mobile bubbles of comfort (a.k.a. cars) anywhere under any conditions and getting where we want or need to go without any fuss. We get pretty pissed off when nature puts a kink in the process. And then we have a 'news' media who has to blow any such situation into a major dramatic confrontation. If we want civility anywhere in this country, maybe we should start with our journalists.

Blizzard aftermath--update. Well, we have the car clear and a path to it. But that was some work. We made the mistake of laying down salt before the storm and the lower two layers was variously frozen slush. We decided that during the winter we are going to keep the gate open so we can move any snow out without having to throw it somewhere. Damn that was work. Mom saw the snow removal people drive past assessing what they have to do. From what we saw they have their work cut out.

Peter S. Goodman has a good post on the economy at HuffingtonPost this morning. He illustrates exactly why I don't believe the up-up-and-away stock market is any real indicator of the health (or lack of health) of my economy.

By now most people know that Cyclone Tasi hit northern Queensland, Australia. That area is a bit north of the areas that got flooded. What most people probably don't know (unless they are my kind of weird) is that the country is already into a hot summer. Half the country is baking and the other half is boiling.