Three days from now, January 20, will be a busy day: Donald Trump's inauguration has been moved indoors , the Capitol rotunda, with viewers being sent to the Capital One Arena. The last time this happened was in 1985 for Ronald Reagan, when the temperature reached 7F. Not so bad this year at up to 19F, but the prominent factor was wind chill. It is very uncomfortable in DC at this time of year. It was on 13January1982 when I was working for the U.S. Senate. This was a particularly cold period for the city, with temperatures dropping to below zero. Chicago that day was -25F. Citrus groves in Florida froze. It began snowing, all told, around 6 inches in a few hours. A fire in the Metro train line made for a particularly traffic nightmare. When the snowfall seemed to be ending, the first plane to take off at National Airport ( later named Reagan International--he first got elected in 1981 ) when visibility was only a sixteenth of a mile...
Nothing much is changing today, so far. The Los Angeles County wildfire continues, with the Pacific Palisades and Eaton fires still burning. Trump cabinet confirmation hearings doing well, with no bumps in the road today. The hoped for first phase of peace in the Gaza Strip still seems ready to occur on Sunday, January 19. President Joe Biden made his farewell address, and warned against the influence of the super-rich. Surely sounds like the coming of a dictatorship featuring oligarchs, as in Russia. Kilauea Volcano inside Halemaumau Crater still erupting . It comes and goes, and is now again active. It took me two weeks, but I watched all 9 episodes of Squid Game Season 1 and 7 episodes of the second season. Each chapter is about an hour long. I normally would be discrete about sharing too much from these productions, but will make an exception for this series. Most of you don't know South Korean culture, nor their perf...