It's Midwest snow. What's the big deal?

BYRNE: Chicago's ultimate 'snow queen'

I wish I could follow the advice of Dean Martin, or many of the other people who have recorded versions of the winter carol, “Let it snow.”

Because we’re expecting “frightful” weather and it would be “delightful” if I could just hole myself up indoors for the night.

YET THAT WON’T be my fate Tuesday night, because I am a free-lance writer who actually has some paying work lined up that will require me to be out and about, driving my car during the evening hours.

Which, if the weather forecasts are correct, will be at the high point of the “deadly” and “devastating” snow storm that could see up to three inches per hour fall on us, along with strong winds that will blow the fluffy stuff all about and create “white-out” conditions. Visibility will be poor.

I could be in for one of the most harrowing evenings of my lifetime Tuesday night.

Or, it could turn out to be a whole lot of babbling about nothing!

IN MY DUTIES as a reporter-type person for one of the daily newspapers in the suburban Chicago area, I interviewed several municipal types who said that while they expect a heavy snowstorm to fall Tuesday night, they’re not about to start the panic-type talk.

I literally had one school district official tell me how they were reluctant to talk about cancelling classes now, out of fear that the resulting snow storm would turn out to be a little flurry that wouldn’t amount to much – and certainly wouldn’t warrant giving school kids an extra day off from classes.

A premonition, or an over-reaction, for Illinois state government? Photograph provided by state of Illinois.

So this seems to be a matter of what one wants to believe. Little flurry? Or 18-plus inches of snow accumulating during a 24-hour period from Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday afternoon?



Is the Illinois General Assembly, which was supposed to begin its serious business for the year on Tuesday, going to look like a batch of geniuses for already cancelling their entire week’s worth of activity?

OR WILL THEY appear to be panicking for nothing?

Personally, my gut feeling (which is about as accurate as anyone else’s) says we’re due for a heavy snowfall this winter season. Be honest. We really haven’t had one yet this season.

The reality of a Midwestern U.S. winter is that it snows here, and there are times when it is an inconvenience. If it means that this week will be the one heavy snowfall of the 2010-11 winter, then we ought to feel fortunate that we only got one storm – and that we got something resembling advance warning.

People can joke, but those who chose to do some advance grocery shopping on the off-chance that it really does come down hard and heavy are better off than if this snowfall had suddenly snuck up on us and we were caught with nothing.

OR WORSE YET, if we were hit with a surprise snowfall that wound up leaving us stranded somewhere other than our respective homesteads.

This week’s weather is going to draw comparisons to the past.

We’re going to see on our television screens the grainy footage from the past – particularly 1967, when on Jan. 26, 23 inches fell on Chicago during a 35-hour time period.

We’re bound to get at least one old-timer (I was all of 1 ½ years old when that storm occurred) who will recall snowdrifts so high that they were able to walk on top of parked cars, and of people who lost their car for a week or so until the snow finally melted away.

Even winter slop can have some beauty in Chicago



WE’LL EVEN HEAR about the snowstorm of ’79, which as I remember it wasn’t so bad, in and of itself. It was the ineptitude of city officials in dealing with the snowfall, and the perception that then-Mayor Michael Bilandic neglected certain neighborhoods of a racial persuasion in terms of cleanup that caused the Election Day backlash – and the stories that still get told by amateur political observers to this day.

And no, we’re not likely to get a repeat of that scenario in this year’s municipal election cycle. Richard M. Daley isn’t running for election, and I can’t think of any way we can “Blame it on Rahm,” even for those people who want to believe that Emanuel is to blame for everything that is wrong in our society today.

So no, the snow won’t make Carol Moseley-Braun mayor. She’ll have to find another issue to campaign on, aside from the cheap shots she is taking these days about drug use and “smoking crack” cocaine by one of her opponents.

All of which means we’re getting our winter snowfall. Get over it. It snows in this part of the country, and it can be one of the charms of our region – compared to those parts of the United States in the South whose residents mock us now, but will have their home turf turn into a swampy, heated and humid mess in mid-summer; a condition I would find more repulsive than anything that might hit us in Chicago during the next couple of days.

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EXTRA!: Somebody hid the kryptonite

Barack Obama has come a long way from when this image was created of him at the Superman statue in Metropolis (the Illinois version). Photograph provided by Obama for America.

It appears that Barack Obama, the Hawaii native who adopted our fair city as his home as a young man just out of Columbia University, is now truly a citizen of the world.

The Chicago politico who is an alumnus of the Illinois Senate and the Illinois delegation of the U.S. Senate is now president-elect, making him number 44 in a line of officials going back to George Washington.

THAT MAKES HIM the third U.S. president with ties to Illinois – Ronald Reagan was born in Dixon and went to college in Eureka before leaving for an adult life in California, while Abraham Lincoln lived his adult life here before being elected president in 1860.

But Barack is the first with solid Chicago ties to get to be The Boss of the Oval Office – instead of just a trusted adviser (which in all honesty is the future role I would have envisioned for Obama when I first met him some 12 years ago).

Looking at the electoral map, what impresses me the most about an Obama victory is that he unified the Midwest in support (going against the idea that Chicago sits in a Midwestern sea of hostility). He took all those states that comprise Chicagoland (Detroit to Kansas City), even Iowa and Ohio – both of which were solidly Republican for George W. Bush, and was competitive in Indiana (which usually thinks of Democrats as people who eat their young).

The Obama victory became a reality shortly after 10 p.m., when the crowd at Grant Park (or Grant Field, as CBS News anchor Katie Couric kept calling it) erupted in cheer after learning that CNN declared Barack the winner. It was at about that time that Republican opponent John McCain made the concession call.

AND NO, GRANT Park didn’t turn into the riot or orgy of disgusting activity that the Obama naysayers were warning would happen. Despite this, the Obama opposition is very real.

For those people who are now shuddering in their pants at the thought that one of our City Hall hacks is now the Leader of the Free World, relax. The truth of the matter is that Obama, 47, is a “good government” type with just enough of a pragmatic nature to be real about what can be accomplished by government.

My experience in watching him here is that this is not an ideologue, which is what scares the real conservative ideologues who want to think that unbending ideology is the key to being a worthy political person – actually, it just makes someone a stubborn twit.

And the reason that Obama got strong support from the regular Democratic organization is because his ideals reflect well on the Chicago officials to whom politics is about contracts and deals – and not ideals.

IT IS SIMILAR to the reason that the Chicago politicos of old backed attorney Adlai Stevenson II, making the former Illinois governor a credible presidential candidate back in 1952 and 1956.

And what of race, which was supposed to be the “kryptonite” that would take down the Obama campaign? Could it be that our nation is finally moving beyond its hang-ups with regard to race to accept a bi-racial man whose parents' marriage would once have been considered a criminal act in certain states?

In short, the nation is moving into the 21st Century, despite the fact that exit polls of white voters in Southern states shows them voting by a 3-1 ratio for the campaign of Republican opponent John McCain? Some of us are taking a little longer to accept reality than others.

“The Civil War is still being fought in these states,” commentator Mark Shields said during PBS’ analysis of elections results.

ONE FINAL POINT point should be made.

Let’s not forget Obama’s recent loss – the death of his grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, early Monday at her apartment in Honolulu. Obama is the guy who gets to go from the highs of being elected president to the lows of helping to finalize plans for his grandmother’s funeral within the span of 24 hours.

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