Word: winterful
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This is about the time the birds are nesting after returning to the Upper Midwest from their southern winter retreats. The red-winged variety is particularly attracted to marshy terrain and large bodies of water, like Lake Michigan (the shores of which are lined with jogging and cycling paths). Male red wings are usually 10 inches long, and weigh just 2 ounces. They quickly establish their territory - sometime among the trees surrounding urban ponds, or in suburban neighborhoods. They're followed by a throng of a comparatively secretive female lovers (yes, male red wings are polygamous). Females tend to carry...
...seems to have gotten worse over the past few years, with thermostats routinely set at 68deg.F, and sometimes even 65 deg., in the (far too many) hotel rooms I've suffered on the campaign trail. "Americans seem to keep their houses cooler in summer than they do in the winter," muses Edward Parson, an environmental expert at the University of Michigan Law School. But it's hard to know for sure, since there are no comprehensive studies that measure air-conditioning trend lines...
...certain reluctance among politicians to proselytize about energy conservation. It's not as sexy as promoting high-tech gizmos like photovoltaic arrays or electric cars. It reminds people - of a certain age - of Jimmy Carter, in his dreadful cardigan sweater, telling them to set their thermostats at 68deg.F in winter to conserve oil. Carter was certainly right about that one - heating represents nearly twice (roughly 7%) the energy usage that air-conditioning does. By contrast, the Bush Administration has had a policy of malignant neglect, enunciated by Dick Cheney, who once called conservation a "sign of personal virtue...
LeFlore informed him that the substance was calcium chloride, which is also used during the winter to melt snow...
...bell for lifeguard stands, grandparents' homes and sleepaway camps. But summer vacation hasn't always been a birthright of U.S. schoolchildren. In the decades before the Civil War, schools operated on one of two calendars, neither of which included a summer hiatus. Rural schooling was divided into summer and winter terms, leaving kids free to pitch in with the spring planting and fall harvest seasons. Urban students, meanwhile, regularly endured as many as 48 weeks of study a year, with one break per quarter. (Since education was not compulsory, attendance was often sparse; in Detroit in 1843, for example, only...