"Through it all, Europeans tried their best to bear up, especially in places where air conditioning is still a luxury, or frowned upon."

"Some people worry about the pollution it causes; some older Italians just believe it’s bad for health."

From "Dangerous Heat Grips Much of Europe, With More to Come/A punishing heat wave broke records in southern Europe and hasn’t peaked yet in some places, prompting warnings to residents, employers and tourists to alter their habits" (London Times).

What is this belief held by older Italians... and could they be right? People love the comfort of air conditioning and at some point feel fiercely attached to it and resistant to hearing that it might be bad. Obviously, it's bad for the environment, but what about our health? 

But first, what exactly to the old Italians think? According to Grok, the idea is that you should keep you body in balance and not move it back and forth between hot and cold. And they speak of "colpo d’aria" or "colpo di freddo" — "blow of air" or "blow of cold" — as a cause of various pains and respiratory ailments. There's a mistrust of modern inventions and a preference for traditional ways, such as opening windows, fanning, and seeking out the shade. Natural seems better than artificial. 

Is there an element of truth in that... truth... or beauty?

I wondered if The London Times had ever talked about "colpo d’aria" in any other article. Answer: Yes, 3 times:

"When I saw her in that dress, it stopped being cold for me. It was magical."

Said the groom, quoted in "Finding Happily Ever After in a Snowstorm in June/After their wedding was spotted on a webcam, pictures of Jamie and Chris DeBruhl getting married at a mountain resort in Montana spread quickly online" (NYT)(free-access link, so you can see the photos, with the bare-shouldered bride in the snow).

At the Extra-Cold Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

At the Ice and Wind Café...

... you can talk all night.

And no, I've got no pictures for you today. I got up at 5 and looked out the window and thought how could it have rained? It's 24°. But the sidewalks had that rained-on look — brown. That has to be ice. I delayed going out, and though it got sunny and the temperature rose above freezing, a ridiculous wind kicked up. I played it safe and stayed inside. Now, it's dark at last. 

Do you realize the entire dark season — darkest 3-month period of the year — is over and we've entered one of the 2 periods of the year when the light and dark are most balanced?

I've explained my thinking before: "I think the seasons are wrongly divided. They shouldn't begin with an equinox/solstice, but should have the equinox/solstice put right in the middle. That would correspond to how I feel about the seasons: It's about light, not temperature. Winter should have the solstice as its center and should end by mid-February and so forth.”

And: "I would call the seasons: 1. Dark Time (with winter solstice in the middle), 2. Dark-Light Time (with spring equinox in the middle), 3. Light Time (summer solstice in middle), and 4. Light-Dark Time (with fall equinox in middle). Don't worry about the temperature. That can vary. The light and dark are absolutely nailed down."

So, despite the ice and wind, we're in Dark-Light Time now.

Posing on the front steps... ready to fight... or dance.

We're told that when Trump stepped out of the SUV, President Biden said, "Welcome home." Nice.

And nice hat on Melania and purple tie on Trump. Jill leaves in brilliant blue.

That's my photo, from my remote outpost in Madison, Wisconsin, where it is 29 degrees colder than it is in Washington, where the inauguration solemnities and festivities have been moved indoors. 

At the Sunday Night Café...

 ... you can write about anything you want.

No sunrise picture today. It was -4° at sunrise.

UPDATE, January 20th, 5:26 a.m.: It's -4° again this morning, and it's predicted to be -12° tomorrow at sunrise (with a "feels like" temperature of -29). I guess I'll stay in and watch the inauguration and the first 2 days of Trump, the Revenge Tour... or whatever it is. They've moved the inauguration inside, into the Rotunda, but I see the temperature in Washington today is in the mid-20s... and that's a hyphen, not a minus sign. 

"The planet is officially on alert for La Niña... scientists declared Thursday. It could have a cooling effect on the ongoing stretch of record global heat...."

"The climate pattern linked to cool Pacific Ocean conditions... can deliver drought conditions in some places and heavy snow in others.... But there is some uncertainty over how this episode of La Niña could play out because it arrives amid over a full year of record average global temperatures and unprecedented ocean surface warmth. Climate scientists will be paying close attention to whether La Niña’s typical global cooling influence plays out as usual.... 'It’s going to be interesting to see how this La Niña intersects with the generally very warm global oceans,' said Nathan Lenssen, a climate scientist at the University of Colorado. 'We’re in really uncharted territory, globally.'.... La Niña typically lasts nine to 12 months but can sometimes last three years...."

WaPo reports.

By the way, the term El Niño originated as a reference to baby Jesus, after fishermen noticed warm water at Christmastime. La Niña doesn't refer to anyone in particular. It's just the opposite of El Niño.

Expect to be instructed time and again that the cooler weather should not be viewed as an easing up of global warming.

"It is a very cold home. It’s early March, and within 20 minutes of being here the tips of some of my fingers have turned white."

"This, they explain, is part of living their values: as effective altruists, they give everything they can spare to charity (their charities). 'Any pointless indulgence, like heating the house in the winter, we try to avoid if we can find other solutions,' says Malcolm. This explains Simone’s clothing: her normal winterwear is cheap, high-quality snowsuits she buys online from Russia, but she can’t fit into them now, so she’s currently dressing in the clothes pregnant women wore in a time before central heating: a drawstring-necked chemise on top of warm underlayers, a thick black apron, and a modified corset she found on Etsy. She assures me she is not a tradwife. 'I’m not dressing trad now because we’re into trad, because before I was dressing like a Russian Bond villain. We do what’s practical.'..."

From a Guardian article with a long headline: "America’s premier pronatalists on having ‘tons of kids’ to save the world: ‘There are going to be countries of old people starving to death’/ Elon Musk (father of 11) supports their cause. Thousands follow their ideology. Malcolm and Simone Collins are on a mission to make it easier for everyone to have multiple children. But are they really model parents?"

"Michael Cohen’s voice sounded truly bizarre in that podcast clip celebrating Trump's indictment on March 30 last year. "

"Giddy, high-pitched, and he was speaking so fast that if you didn’t know better you’d think the tape had been artificially sped up. It also offered jurors a completely different version of the Cohen they are seeing on the witness stand, where he has remained calm and deliberate with every word. [Trump's lawyer] Todd Blanche plays a second clip of Michael Cohen from his podcast, in which he says he hopes 'that this man ends up in prison,' and 'revenge is a dish best served cold,' and 'you better believe I want this man to go down and rot inside for what he did to me and my family.' Cohen's New York accent — he is from the Five Towns, on Long Island — is very pronounced in the podcast clips...."

From the NYT live coverage of the Trump trial. Here's a free-access link.

This gets my rarely used "revenge" tag.

I delved into the topic most deeply back in July 2011, here. Quoting Wikipedia:

"Even 30-mile-an-hour wind gusts whipping down from the nearby Poconos couldn’t move the bubble of Donald Trump-scented awe and alternative reality ..."

"... that descended on this hilltop village for about eight hours on Saturday.... This Schnecksville extravaganza was the fourth Trump rally in the Mid-Atlantic that I’d attended since 2016. I go largely because I think the media still fails to understand America’s most important story of the last 10 years. U.S. democracy is staring out into the abyss not so much because of the narcissistic bluster of one alleged billionaire ex-president, but because of the people with fleece hoodies over their MAGA hats who spent hours in an April windstorm to see him.... So who are these people? A new best-selling book blames Trump’s unshakable popularity on 'White Rural Rage' and that is something you might expect to see here in Schnecksville, where the urbane Eastern Seaboard melts into live-bait shops, Baptist churches and red-brick 19th-century homes. The only problem is that almost everyone I met scoffed at their Green Acres stereotype...."

Writes Will Bunch, in "'Trumpstock' brings peace, unity and a ton of disinformation to Schnecksville/Fierce mountain winds in Lehigh County couldn't move the bubble of misinformation surrounding the throng at a Trump rally" (Philadelphia Inquirer). 

Here's video of that Trump's rally:

 

Trump: "This is a hell of a rally. I just heard there are 42,000. You know we expected maybe — because it's freezing, right, it's freezing. I'm freezing my ass off up here. At least they could have given me a little bit of a heater underneath this. They gave me nothing! See, they take advantage — my own people take advantage of me. They gave me nothing. But... you know we expected maybe 10,000 people. We have 42,000 people tonight. 42,000. As far as the eye can see. I wish the I wish the fake news media would turn those camera look at all those cameras. Wow wow wow wow...."

"At least 'some' football fans, who attended January's bitterly cold Kansas City Chiefs playoff game, suffered extreme frostbite and eventually needed amputations...."

From "Some attendees of frigid Chiefs game forced into amputations following severe frostbite, Kansas City hospital says /The Jan. 13 wildcard victory over the Miami Dolphins might have come at a terrible price for some spectators who endured sub-zero cold" (NBC News).

"It was the fourth coldest football game in NFL history with the famed"Ice Bowl" of Dec. 31 1967 still serving at the frozen gridiron standard."

Drooling winters.

I don't have an EV, nor did I want one... even before all the talk this year about how bad they are in cold weather. But somehow I clicked on "Frigid weather saps EV batteries. Here’s how to keep yours running."

Is there really any good advice, or are you just screwed when it's really cold?

"Schools were closed, cars veered into ditches, and DeSantis did his best to bond with locals over their strange, snowy ways."

"'I actually do have a winter coat, and I forgot it,' he told a group of highway-construction contractors, on Wednesday morning. 'So the next people that are coming up from Tallahassee, they’re going to bring it.... But I think I’m going to need earmuffs and all that other stuff. So any tips you can give me....'"

Writes Sarah Larson, in "When Ron DeSantis Forgot His Coat/On the eve of the Iowa caucuses, the Florida governor faces blizzards, skeptical voters, and the chill of his own campaign" (The New Yorker).

Lots more at the link. I just want to quote this sentence: "Posing for photographs, DeSantis looked as if he were trying to keep his smile perfectly still while it attempted to crawl off his face."

Meanwhile, also in The New Yorker: "Trump Receives a Warm Embrace in Frigid Iowa/Before the caucuses, snow had kept the former President away from his enthusiastic crowds. On Saturday, he finally arrived in Des Moines."  The reporter, Antonia Hitchens, writes:

"In cold weather, I feel more alive..."

"This is, without a doubt, my soul season, especially the time leading up to the long darkness of the polar night, because, with the darkness looming, you just naturally soak up the moments even more. Every day feels special, especially in the golden hour, the burning rays of the setting sun."

"... a curiously undersung regional delicacy: the cold-cheese slice, whereupon a giant fistful of uncooked mozzarella is added to a plain slice..."

"... just as it emerges hot from the oven. Local legend has it that Little Vincent’s developed this innovation as a way to help overeager patrons, unwilling or unable to wait for their pizza’s heat to dissipate, avoid burning their mouths; whatever its true origins, it is perplexing that nobody else has thought to copy the idea.... A cold-cheese slice offers the thermal and textural contrasts that define the best kind of street eating...."

From "33 Eating Adventures/A Turkish feast among jet-skiers in Sheepshead Bay, dosas worth a drive to Jersey, and carnitas in someone’s Woodside backyard" (NY Magazine).

"Mrs. Space, 68… weighs just over 80 pounds, making it difficult for her to get warm."

"She and her husband, Thomas, watched as the thermometer in their home dipped into the low 60s. When Ms. Space started having headaches and shortness of breath, the two decided it was time to leave.... The Spaces tried to call hotels in the area, but many were sold out and available rooms were too expensive. Mr. Space found the American Red Cross shelter in Kalamazoo, so the couple packed what they needed from their home and spent the night there on Friday evening. 'It was almost a blessing, just to be able to walk in here and be given a cot,' she said."

From "'Frustrating and Upsetting': Residents in Michigan Endure Fourth Day Without Power/After an ice storm caused power failures across the state, 400,000 customers were still without electricity on Saturday. For some, it’s the second blackout in months" (NYT).

"Parts of the Northeast woke up to the coldest morning in decades on Saturday, with temperatures 30 degrees or more below average and wind chills in the extremely dangerous category."

"Virtually the entirety of New England was included in wind chill warnings, while Mount Washington’s minus-109 degree wind chill set a record for the entire United States. The National Weather Service office serving the Boston region described the cold as 'a historic Arctic outbreak for the modern era,' and warned that 'this is about as cold as it will ever get.'"

WaPo reports.

"For more than 1,000 nights, Isaac Ortman, 14, has slept beneath the stars in his backyard in Duluth, Minn., including on a night when the temperature dipped to minus-38 degrees."

"What started as a whimsical self-challenge... is now a nightly routine.... [He] even insisted on sleeping outside after he broke his left wrist in an accident at home this month. 'We came home from the emergency room, and I went back outside like I always do,' Isaac said. 'It’s like the time we saw a bear walk up to our patio door. Thirty minutes later, I was brushing my teeth and getting ready to go to sleep outside.'....  His dad [said] 'He found a waterproof hammock to string up in the yard, and he has a couple of sleeping bags, under-quilts and over-quilts that he can add depending on how cold it is.'... Isaac said [he has] an insulated hood.... 'It goes over my entire face and cinches up so just my nostrils are out.... Even in the cold, I sleep just fine....' ... [H]e prefers snow, rain and wind to the heat and humidity of the summer. 'Unless it’s below zero, I like to stick one of my legs out at night, so I don’t get too hot,' he said. 'If you’re cold, you can always put on layers. But in the summer, there’s only so much you can take off. You get all sweaty, plus there are mosquitoes'...."

From "Minnesota teen has slept in his backyard for nearly 3 years just for fun/'I guess a lot of people might find it a little unusual, but to us, it’s now the normal routine,' said Andrew Ortman, the teen’s father" (WaPo).

Lots of themes here, but there are 2 that I personally identify with:

1. Finding something you like and doing it repeatedly — a positive ritual. I blog every day and also have a ritual — though not every single day — of going out to the same place every day at sunrise. I find this immensely satisfying.

2. The weather will sometimes challenge us, but I agree that the challenge at the cold end of the scale is better than the challenge at the hot end. Sure, the cold has more power to kill you, but there are outward things you can do! Bundle up.

Cold.

"When you ask Americans how they save energy at home, 'turn off the lights' has been at the top of the list since the 1980s."

"But when it comes to actual savings, it doesn’t even crack the top 10. Like most conventional wisdom about how to reduce household energy and emissions, much of what we believe about our homes and appliances is wrong."

Writes WaPo's climate advice columnist Michael J. Coren, in "We still use appliances like it’s 1970. There’s a better way."

I formed the habit, back in the 1970s, of turning off lights as I exited any room and only keeping lights on in rooms that were occupied. I grew up in the 50s and 60s, when it was the norm to have the lights on all over the house in the evening. We didn't think about the pros and cons of leaving them on, but I imagine that we'd have thought it would deprive us of a feeling of coziness and optimism if the house were not lit up at night. From the outside, our house and our neighbors' houses looked warm and happy and alive.