“Oh the weather outside might be frightful,
But the idea of a snow day is so delightful,
And since we don’t know the way the forecast will go,
Let it snow, then decide if to close!”

With no apologies to the late Sammy Cahn, I share with you what has transpired over the last day. Yes, this is part rant and part constructive criticism as well.

Yesterday around 4 pm, I got an alert for my kids’ school system stating that classes would be canceled today due to a looming snow storm. Where I didn’t feel like looking at the forecast myself, some people told me we would be getting a few inches to a foot of snow during what was being called Winter Storm Avree. As the snow was supposed to start overnight and dramatically impact rush hour traffic, school was proactively canceled in the name of safety the day before it was to happen. Canceled not just in my fair town but in a majority of the State of Wisconsin in the US upper Midwest, an area that is not unfamiliar with snow in January.

When I awoke this morning, there were signs that school was certainly canceled. A plethora of dishes and implements from the late-night baking my kids did as they didn’t have to get up early filled the kitchen. However when looking out the window, there was a mere dusting of the white stuff in the street and there were bare spots on the driveway and sidewalk at my home. Way to go Avree.

So much for the snow, and the concerns of safety that compelled government officials to cancel education for a day. As I write this it is over 24 hours from when the cancellation notice was sent, but nothing even close to white-out conditions that would make it unsafe to travel in the morning. Even as it snowed later in the day into the evening, it was certainly navigable out.

Golden Snow Days

The events of the last day are a far cry from what life was for me when I was growing up in the 1970’s and 1980’s. School cancellations would happen in the morning of the school day. Us kids would get up earlier in the morning to huddle by the radio to hear if our school system was cancelled. What was told to me years later by the assistant superintendent was the decision was made early in the morning, considering the forecast and what was happening outside their window, and then phoned into the radio and TV stations along with the secret password so some wiseass wouldn’t just call in a bogus cancellation.

This approach followed me from public schools to even college, as they were slow to never cancelling classes. Where it was always nice to have a day off, the reality was that I was in New England, snow happened in the winter, and we had to deal with it. This was the assumption I had when I moved to Wisconsin, as I previously alluded to.

Today is not Yesterday

So what has changed? Is it the litigious society we live in? Is it a by-product of the recent lockdowns? Is there an assumption that more parent are home (albeit working) so if closing classes are canceled the kids can stay domicile with the parents or families who will already be there? Are we simply not as tough as we used to be? I am sure if I pose this question directly to a school bureaucrat I will be returned with a scripted response laced with safety as the paramount concern, but not acknowledging my reservations for the kids staying home, especially as report after report continues to come forth on the negative impact of school closings over the past few years on kids performance in school.

Somewhere in the middle is a happy medium. But who wants to meet in the middle these days? Fortunately we got enough snow to make a decent snowman as secondary compensation. The primary compensation will be classes in session tomorrow.

Deconstructing Weather Related School Closings

Safety is always a concern in all we do. But the process that goes into determining what is safe or not has to be reviewed to ensure it makes sense, and take into consideration possible collateral damage as a result of any decisions made. The best place for kids to be for learning is in person and all reasonable actions should be made to ensure this happens as much as possible.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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What better a way to celebrate a birthday than with a cake? As these days I am not eating the ingredients you typically make a cake with, I went to OpenAI’s DALL-E AI image generator to make one. As you can see from the accompanying image with post, I have some major work to do on my prompt writing in the new year.

That being said, I didn’t put much time and thought into my prompts, which are the natural language queries you enter to get an image. Of all of the prompts and adjustments to them, this image was the best of them all.

Where I don’t have plans to use AI to create major portions of the content of this blog, you the reader should expect to hear more about it as I – and most of the known world – will be thinking and acting on AI in the future. If something is AI-generated, I will also note it as such. I do hope to have more timely topics that live up to the genesis of the name of this blog, along with takeaways and giveaways of the books I read. That being said I don’t want to get ahead of myself as I suck at predictions, especially when it comes to my productivity with my humble blog.

Happy 17th to The Hot Iron and a Happy 2024 to you!

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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For as long as I can remember I have seen versions of A Christmas Carol performed. The classic Charles Dickens tale of redemption for the holidays has been performed in plays and on TV. Yet for as long as I can remember I have never read the actual text of the story. This is extremely ironic, as I have owned a copy of it since before I could even read! Yes, the picture accompanying this post was given to me as a child, and it has remained with me over the myriad of moves over my life. On a recent work trip I packed it in my carry-on bag to read on the flight.

Would reading the actual, non-adapted words of the author be unique experience from seeing George C. Scott amongst others reciting the words of Ebenezer Scrooge? And would it be possible to have takeaways from such a seminal story? Yes, and yes.

Enjoyed read the original story – It was a pleasure to read the actual words of Charles Dickens now over 180 years from when it was originally published. Where the presentation was classic British English, it was a nice contrast to the adapted and embellished narratives I have watch on big and small screens and live in such venues as the Goodman Theater in Chicago.

Staves not Chapters – Each of what I would traditionally consider a chapter in the book was called a stave. As I am unfamiliar with the term, I had to look it up. I found this great description of what a stave is, as it’s rooted in music, and relates to the title being a carol and thus a song. This is something I never picked up from any performance.

How to get the good out of other – I have always felt that most people have good at their core, and for whatever reason it has been hidden or warped by layers that have cocooned it over the years. In the original words that unraveling of Scrooge’s bitterness happens rather quickly upon encountering the Ghosts. From personal experience, however, people don’t change that rapidly. Then again, how many ghosts have they seen?

My copy of A Christmas Carol was published in 1966 and cost a whopping 50 cents. Illustrations from the period of the 1800’s when the book was written are included in each paragraph, er, stave. In the middle of the book is a “reader’s supplement” which includes additional notes and illustrations to help paint the picture of life in that period.

If you’ve never read A Christmas Carol and you are someone who celebrates the season as a religious or secular holiday, I highly recommend getting a copy of it. Where giving away to others what I read is a tradition here at The Hot Iron, I am going to pull a Scrooge and keep this copy in the home – I have owned it this long, and will pass it along to my family.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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To all those who believe Christ the Savior was born today, Merry Christmas! To those who do not, Happy Monday!

With all of the hustle, bustle and unnecessary anxiety over the holidays, it’s always nice to see a sign that makes you stop in your tracks, pause for a bit and get a positive emotion from it. For myself, one of them (yes, I have been blessed to have had a few) was on the flight back from the Microsoft Azure and AI Conference I attended a few years ago. On the flight down I turned off the seat-back entertainment screen so I could read an actual paper book, but on the way back I decided to peruse the options from Delta Air Lines a bit when what to my wondering eyes did appear.

That was when I had the moment, which I captured in the picture accompanying this post. It’s a yule log video. It brought back memories of watching the yule log burning on WPIX-TV Channel 11 in New York City as a kid. For some reason the cable system in my town in western Massachusetts got the New York City independent TV stations, WPIX being one of them. Every Christmas 11 Alive, the as the station’s tag line was at the time, would air the yule log, ideally to give the Christmas spirit of a roaring fire for people living in apartments in the Big Apple. It was nice for us to watch as our chimney was capped and thus our fireplace wasn’t a working one. Of course I wondered how Santa got into the house, but I digress. It’s nostalgic to watch this video these many years later, especially as when I started watching it, we had a black and white TV. I have linked to the yule log video here and have embedded it below.

From my home to yours, wherever you may be, have a wonderful holiday season!

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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“There are eight million stories in the Naked City; this has been one of them.” That famous line is from the movie The Naked City, a story about a murder in New York City. Sure, in a city of that many people there are certainly that many stories if not more. But what about elsewhere? Take a more less-populated area, for example. Of course there are, and the book Yarns From A Country Courier by Charlotte Heikkinen is a collection of stories by this teacher / journalist from her life as she chronicled them in her newspapers columns over the years.

My interest in this book is rooted in the fact I know Charlotte’s sons, both of whom are of course mentioned in her stories. I bought a copy of this self-published tome from the author herself, as she setup a shop at a local community market. As I read through her tales of growing up in the rural Midwest, among the yarns of her life I had several takeaways.

A slice of history – The tales told here are much more than a personal story of one woman, but the story of how life was where she was at that time. These stories need to be told, and each one is a square in the vast quilt of history.

Know your audience – Just before I bought my copy of the book she was talking to the person in front of me who was buying their own copy. She told them the text is in big print to benefit her target audience of an older generation. As I write this post I am nodding my head getting used to my new bifocals, so I appreciate the attention to detail to have larger text on the page for her readers.

More encouragement to write my own – After reading the book I said to myself, as I have said before, “I need to write my own book.” I guess I can say I am making progress towards it one blog post at a time. And for as much as I encourage others to write and publish their own book, I need to start making a more concerted effort on my end.

Yarns From A Country Courier was an enjoyable read, telling the stories of life from the middle of the last century to the present. I especially liked the mentions of her sons, but I digress. For anyone interested in the personal nuances and challenges of rural life at that time, I highly recommend the book. As I pass along all books I read, I am passing it along to the parents of another friend of mine – I have enjoyed engaging in conversations with them over the years and have enjoyed their stories; perhaps after reading this they too may be motivated to write their own book?

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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