I am a former Chicago Public Schools student. I attended CPS from the late 1950s through the early 1970s. Especially in the early primary years, I had to wear skirts or dresses; in the winter, this was torture. I often arrived at school (a short four-block walk) with legs the color of fresh meat. When the dress code was relaxed, I was a high-school sophomore and welcomed the chance to wear slacks to school.
But the temperatures were still very, very cold in wintertime; I suffered through many a long wait or commute in cold that was nowhere near what we have just endured, no matter what I wore.
Technology has improved weather forecasting from the time my siblings and I went to school. Wind-chill factors and air temperatures on bare human skin were unheard of then but are taken seriously now. Frostbite is no longer such a joke. I found that out the hard way when I took the trash out one day last winter and had a terrifying minute when my gloveless fingers stuck to the metal back gate.
There also used to be more buses, closer together, than there are today. I live on a major bus route and see how few and far between they run. And even 10 minutes feels like 100 when the weather is brutal. This is not “good for the pups,” as William Choslovsky so snidely declared in his recent Perspective piece.
Conclusion: It can be too cold to be out. That is the lesson that emergency-room technicians and weather forecasters look to teach lawyers like Choslovsky.
— Martha F.Grieashamer, Chicago
