What's History: Little Local Sources on Big Cold Days

This is it, the Big Cold Day. We've been talking about it for a week. As predicted, Midwestern temperatures lost so many degrees it seems like sheer irresponsibility; the wind chill has it feeling like -40 F outside in Champaign today (not, of course, that I have felt it for myself, as I'm afraid to let in the cold air and never get warm again). Everyone here is hoping their furnaces keep kicking for the duration and fervently instructing one another to "stay warm." 

In honor of the occasion and because I definitely don't have anything else to do (ha), I thought it might be interesting to do a little investigation into the history of notably cold weather in these parts, using a nifty little database called the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections. I wanted to see the papers in the immediate vicinity, to link as closely as possible the weather of today to other past Big Cold Days , and see if there was anything useful for a class assignment that might come out of this sort of investigation. The great thing about this collection is that, unlike many library resources I use to do research, it's free to use for anyone without any sort of login, so follow along if you'd like! 

As I settled in I ran into an interesting little research problem. There were four collections involved in this project: the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection, which has the local papers I was hoping to examine; Farm, Field, and Fireside, which holds agricultural papers from around the country; American Popular Entertainment, full of entertainment industry trade journals; and Collegiate Chronicle, students newspapers from a wide variety of postsecondary institutions. I'm sure these last three all have something to say about weather, but I wanted to know only about the closest regions' papers, so I needed to look only at the first collection. I could browse through titles in each of these collections, but the search didn't seem to let me narrow to a collection-- I could choose to confine the search to one or more paper titles (though only more than one if they were next to each other in the alphabetical list), so I just compared the list from here to the list of options here and searched within a few that looked promising. 

I decided the word "coldest" was the most likely candidate to look for in the papers I examined-- The Champaign Daily News, the Daily Illini, and the Urbana Daily Courier. Below are a few favorites-- all titles link to the originals, with PDFs available of the full issues. 

Amongst two pages of reporting on a tragic 1903 theatre fire in Chicago, this brief article adds a bit of levity. D.C. Long, a local Civil War Veteran who appears a few other times in the Urbana paper, claims that exactly forty years ago was the coldest in the history of the nation, with animals killed by the chill. "I don't know what the thermometer registered, but it was cold, I know that," he concluded. 

"Cold Forty Years Ago Today," Urbana Daily Courier, Jan. 1, 1904.

These stories appeared a page apart in a 1929 issue of the Daily Illini. I like the focus in each on the role of the "weather man"-- the AP reporter accords him a lot of power! 

"Brrr! Thermometer Dropped to 8 Below Yesterday Morning" and
"Weather Man Has Touch of Kindness," Daily Illini, Dec. 4, 1929. 

This 1959 report of an unusually cold November features a student giving a far better demonstration of proper scarf usage than her modern counterpart distributed by the University of Illinois yesterday. 

"Winter Hits Area Before It's Due," Daily Illini, Nov. 18, 1959. 

It was a lot of fun sorting through these sources. I'll likely find a way to incorporate a similar activity into a history course, especially one on media or an intro to historical methods. The benefit is similar to unstructured research time, with more of a defined, if small, endgoal-- to figure out some connection to a modern event in the past. It's a nice practice run before students jump into trying to find sources for a large research project, with lots of directions to run in and few ways to really fail. It could also lead into a discussion of shifts and continuities in how the topic is discussed in the press-- how have we been informed about the current weather as compared to those informed of cold weather in the past, for example? How do the headlines present the story? 


Related Links: 
Some comparisons of recent stories on the Big Cold Day: Daily Illini, News-Gazette. And, if you're hungry, the modern Urbana Daily Courier. 

Some historical Illinois Weather Trivia for January. 

If you'd like to see more old newspapers freely available, check out Chronicling America at the Library of Congress, which features more varieties of newspaper than you can shake a stick at.

Enough About Me: The Age of Resolutions

Happy New Year, and happy new semester! It's been great to have a little time to reflect on and recuperate from the fall. 

Old-fashioned classroom with wooden desks and attached benches. Teaching goal for a future year: Have a class here.

I'm not teaching this semester, which is a peculiar sort of joy. I love thinking about teaching when I'm not currently doing it, because everything is in the future; I can get any idea or learn about any resource and have the opportunity to put it into a future plan in a way I rarely have time to consider when I'm actually in the midst of a course. It gives me more space to devote to planning and making connections. To fill some part of this space, I have a few teaching-related goals for the year: 

Finish the Graduate Teacher Certificate through the Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning.

For some time I've been slowly working toward pursuing this certificate. The Graduate Teacher Certificate requires two semesters of teaching, as well as an observation and discussion with a CITL representative or a faculty member, some participation in teaching workshops, and conducting and reflecting on student evaluations. After completing the observation with History's Graduate Teaching Mentor Dana Rabin, and receiving both informal early feedback and end of semester ICES forms from students in fall, all I need to do to complete the first certificate is to fine-tune my written reflections on observation and evaluation of my teaching this semester. 

Start on the Teacher Scholar Certificate. 

The Teacher Scholar Certificate is a step above the Graduate Teacher Certificate, and is available to both graduate and faculty instructors. It requires an extra semester of teaching, some form of departmental or disciplinary service, and more extensive written reflections on pedagogy, service, and teaching philosophy. I'm looking forward to working on this-- it's a nice thing to put on a curriculum vitae, but pursuing these certificates has also given me permission to invest time in learning more about teaching. 

Go to two teaching workshops, lectures, or discussion groups.

I think I've mentioned before that when I'm stuck in my writing, going to a lecture or other event, even if unrelated to what I do, can be hugely helpful. It leads me to consider my own evidence or argument in new ways, learn something about structure from the choices the presenter has made, or just spend an hour learning something without trying to fit it into what I'm currently trying to do. Going to teaching related events could be similarly helpful for current writing and future plans; moreover, it may also allow me to make connections with other folks interested in talking about teaching.

Invest time in current teaching conversations and scholarship.

The other goals are pretty specific; this one is a more general intention to realign some habits of thought around what I read and write. Many of the things I find most helpful when teaching is looking backwards at when I was a student. It's no surprise that my dissertation continually comes back to people acting and forming their priorities out of their own lived experience; I'm already interested in the many ways this can be fruitful in everyday life. As one must be a student before one can be a teacher, it's often a helpful way to think about this relationship. Yet there's also a huge world out there about the scholarship of teaching and learning, and writing about ways to grapple with teaching, and it's wasteful to ignore the resources and strategy it can provide. I want to pick up more books about designing assignments, strategizing objectives, and communicating expectations this year. 


Here's my challenge to you-- are there any teaching or learning related goals that you've wanted an excuse to explore? Consider this an offer of permission to value those things enough to try them this year.