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...

Track and Field events have started.    I guess I don't keep up with this field, because I was surprised to see a qualifying heat called mixed relay, that involved teams of two females and two males.  Also, there is now another way to qualify for individual events through something called   repechage . Whereas in previous years the qualifiers to the semifinals would include the top two or three in each heat plus 'lucky losers' who didn't finish in these places but still had fast times, the athletes who do not qualify by finishing in the automatic qualifying positions in round one heats will have a second chance to qualify for the semi-finals by participating in repechage heats. The top athletes from the repechage will then qualify for the semifinals along with the athletes who finished in the top places in the initial heats.  where someone can be racing in a heat of losers, and win.  This option is only available from the 200 meter through 1500 meter r...

The Paris Summer Olympics roll along, and so are the teams of the USA.    Women's gymnastics team , overcame ailing legs, illnesses, falls and twisties to rather easily win the Gold medal. Men's gymnastics team  won a medal, bronze, for the first time in 16 years. Good ethnic mix on both teams.  In no other event will you see such close team camaraderie, and hugs. Men's soccer team , for the first time in 24 years, reached the knockout round.  They face Morocco at 9AM EDT on Friday, August 2. Both women's and men's volleyball teams look to make the next round. Katie Ledecky  coasted to victory in the 1500 meter swim, topping her Olympic mark of Tokyo by 5 seconds, finishing 10 seconds before the silver medalist, winning her 8th gold medal, the most in swimming, with Jenny Thompson. The most stunning USA victory, maybe ever, was in women's rugby, where they won the bronze medal match over heavily favored Australia.  First medal in rugby for the U.S. sin...