Brrrrrr......

I'm in Grinnell, Iowa, at the moment, visiting Grinnell College, giving a presentation / speech about NCLB. There's a lot I could discuss -- the friendly people, pleasant accomodations, lively dialogue before and after the speech, the fact that Grinnell has the 6th largest endowment per-student of any college or university in the nation, larger than Stanford, Amherst, or M.I.T., but all I can really concentrate on at the moment is the fact that it's very, very cold. I mean, REALLY COLD. When I accepted the invite to come here last Fall, I knew it was cold in theory in Iowa in February, but to actually step into this upper midwestern maelstrom of coldness is to be reminded that it's never, ever, actually cold in Washington, DC. Chilly perhaps, nippy from time to time, occcasionally on the cool side, but never cold like it is here, now. The drive from Des Moines takes a little over an hour and on the way I must have seen 100 cars buried in the median or on the side of the road in the ice and snow. It's cold, I say!

Update: Temperature when I walked out the door at 8AM this morning: Minus 12 degrees. Just to put that in perspective, I'd say the typical resident of DC would regard 30 degrees as cold. The difference between here and that is the same as the difference between 30 and warm spring day of 72.