As many of you know I was born in Chicago and lived most of my life north of the Windy City. There was a time when I actually enjoyed winter weather (I’m a pretty good hockey player for an old guy) and watching losing baseball.

But I wised up and moved here. We had a wonderfully mild winter until Feb. 12 and the attention I once paid to Chicago’s awful north side baseball team I have since refocused on the Saluki men’s basketball team and, to a lesser extent, the football team.

I’d like to say it’s working out for me but the early returns are not encouraging. The Salukis rarely lose a home game, but when they do, I’m in the stands. This was recently noticed by our sports editor, Les Winkeler, who quickly recommended that I skip the Illinois State University game on Saturday. I went. The Salukis lost.

Les also has suggested that I brought the winter weather with me. He believes this to be the case because some people are complaining about this being the worst winter ever. And I just happen to be around for this one.

I didn’t do it, honest.

Because this is a presidential election year I expect a lot of phone calls. They will be roughly divided into two camps:

1. Democrats who consider me a right-wing wacko who really should be chirping with the other far-out loons on talk radio.

2) Republicans who think I’m in league with the rest of the “liberal press” to suppress the “real” news and perhaps vote Dan Rather into the White House.

Neither is accurate. And since I’m catching criticism from both camps in roughly equal numbers I feel justified in claiming to be a true middle-of-the-road kind of guy.

That’s what I’m telling the author of the following message, who claims we did wrong by publishing a story about conservatives questioning Barack Obama’s patriotism on page 3A of Sunday’s paper.

“I am outraged at the smear campaign taking place to question Barack Obama’s patriotism. Articles such as Nedra Pickler’s Sunday piece for the AP masquerade as news, until finally a significant number of people are repeating the meme as if it were true. The media should not be an echo chamber for conservative attacks.

If I continue to find such disgusting material in your newspaper, I’ll simply quit reading it. And you wonder why newspaper subscriptions are drying up!”

Subscriptions at The Southern Illinois are doing just fine, actually, and we now reach more people in the region than ever before through our paper and Web site. Research shows three quarters of our market read either our paper or Web site regularly so we’re not exactly “drying up.”

The story was based on conservatives asking questions about Obama. It actually happened. How is that not news? We’ve also reported on the suspicions surrounding Republican U.S. Senator John McCain’s past association with a lobbyist. How is that not news?

We’ll be running a lot of stories about all of the candidates. You eventually may find a story that  seems unfair to your favorite candidate. I hope not, but it might happen. We offer the broadest possible spectrum of news and opinions, while taking great care to prevent the publication of falsehoods. But we can’t be sure of how any individual message will be received and interpreted, no matter how carefully it is presented.

What would you do differently?

I’ve been remiss in my blogging and have no better excuse than our suddenly awful weather. I was going to write about how U.S. Sen John McCain’s supposed near-peccadillo with a lobbyist (supposed by the politically motivated New York Times) might actually help his candidacy. But it takes too long to compare and contrast the McCain accusations with those that always dogged the still-popular Bill Clinton. Hmmmm. Maybe that’s my point.

I’ll now return to the weather.

Lousy weather has a big impact on newspapers. Unless a transmitter loses power or a tower topples, a broadcaster can stay on the air indefinitely. But our print product relies on a network of carriers to bring the product to your doorstep after a day that involves getting people to work, gathering facts and taking photos, and then putting it all together for an enormously complicated electro-mechanical device known as a printing press.

Newspapers nationwide know their routine as the daily miracle, but bad weather makes it even more of a miracle to succeed. We’ve done pretty well during this tough weather — I live at the end of a very steep hill and know we had a good night when there is a paper in my tube in the early morning.

That’s what I found today, thanks to a great crew at work and some really dedicated carriers.

Both our newspaper and online reports were affected by the snow and ice storm which continued through late Tuesday. The impact was good in some ways, not good in others.

Our online report crackled with breaking news throughout the daylight hours on Tuesday. Online Editor Caleb Hale logged more than 50 “Breaking news” updates by 3 p.m. That’s the good part.

The not so good began when Hale needed to rush home to inspect his home for roof damage from a falling limb. We already were working with a small staff (those who live in remote locations couldn’t make it to work) and everyone began focusing on the Wednesday newspaper.

Trouble was, we lost power at The Southern Illinoisan at 8:51 p.m. Tuesday. Nothing can be done without electricity, so our online site wasn’t updated at night and the printing of the newspaper was endangered.  We were planning to print a little earlier than normal but the power outage changed those plans. Despite the best efforts from Ameren, we didn’t get our electrical service restored until just before midnight.

Our copy editors did a great job of quickly getting the paper ready for printing. Cara Recine, Heather Henley and Jens Deju built the pages while Karen Binder and I helped with proofreading their work. The final pages were ready for printing at 1:20 a.m. and the papers began rolling off the press at 1:45 a.m. today.

Our circulation department then took over. They got the papers into the hands of carriers across Southern Illinois and most of our customers got a newspaper delivered today.  It was a tremendous effort, but it just wasn’t possible to deliver some papers. Roads remained blocked by fallen trees, in some areas, and heavy ice kept carriers from reaching some locations.

We’re sorry about that, but don’t think anyone at the paper got special treatment. I haven’t received my paper for the last two days and neither has our publisher.

Whenever I talk with friends up north I always ask about how much snow is on the ground. It allows me to then explain we don’t have any snow cover, mention that it hit 70 degrees recently and chuckle.

I stopped laughing today. We’ve got thick ice covering everything at our place (fell on my butt feeding the birds at dawn!) it’s almost impossible to drive uphill to the main road and our electricity is out. It wasn’t too rough getting into the office, which has electricity, obviously, but there is no certainty when we’ll again be able to enjoy the creature comforts of home — such as heat and cooking.

It’s not likely that my bragging about an easy winter produced an ice storm, but I’m changing my ways nonetheless. Suddenly the idea of an old-fashioned, northern-style snow storm seems rather appealing.

Snow can be shoved out of the way, after all, and it’s much softer during a sudden fall.

Two weeks ago I foolishly predicted the Super Bowl matchup between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots would be both boring and a ratings disaster. It was actually a terrific game and was the most-watched game in Super Bowl history.

Here is the worst part from a doubly-awful prediction: It will be interesting to see the TV ratings the game pulls — heavy viewership along the densely populated East Coast, obviously, but the game lacks any real appeal to anyone other than fans of wealthy, arrogant football franchises.

Nielsen Media Research reported Monday that 105.7 million people were watching in the final quarter. That would indicate the game was watched far beyond New York and Boston.

I’ve been eating crow all day long, which I both deserve and have learned to enjoy on past occasions when I let my mouth speed faster than my brain, or in this case my keyboard fingers. Revenge is a dish best served cold, but crow is best consumed while hot, as in hot under the collar — the reaction some folks experienced from my earlier prediction.

My ill-considered sports braying annoyed Saluki fans who were rooting for Brandon Jacobs. I also heard from one my friends on the East Coast because of the blog, which probably surprises some readers. But it’s true. I have a friend.

Dennis told me in a phone call the Giants would win. I laughed at his prediction and said the Patriots would throw the Giants around like rag dolls and run up the score. 

Make that a double helping of crow, please.

Winter driving does not bother me. I lived through many, many winters in Wisconsin, a state that takes its name from an Indian term meaning “Geeez it’s cold here.”

We got so much snow in Oshkosh (which means “I’m freezing”) that it wasn’t always possible to plow it towards the curb in the downtown neighborhoods. The stuff would pile up until it was taller than most cars. City crews would dig the stuff away from the curbs with end-loaders, dump the snow into trucks and haul it to a less bothersome location. Other streets were plowed toward the middle and the snow was scooped and hauled away quickly.

It was an amazing process. People up north are really good at getting snow out of their way. And they learn how to drive in snow without too many difficulties.

I’m a good driver in snow and have a four-wheel-drive vehicle. I consider myself unstoppable and experienced. And despite all of this expertise I nearly spun out of control while driving to work this morning.

Maybe I’m a little out of practice. Or maybe I’ve been a little too cocky about my mastery over snow. Today’s snowfall isn’t all that big, but it can turn dangerous mighty fast.

Take it easy out there. I will, too.

We’re used to getting the short end of the stick in Southern Illinois, so maybe it shouldn’t be such a shock that FutureGen turned into FutureGyp.

What looked like our best bet to find a global market for the bituminous coal below the surface of our region now feels more like the sneakiest, bag-over-the-head, kick-in-the-pants ever to slink out of Washington. That’s saying a lot. There’s never been a shortage of slinkage from the city known as D.C., which doesn’t really stand for Destiny Crushed — though it feels that way for those of us who hailed the selection of Mattoon as host city for the promising coal gasification project.

For years the U.S. Department of Energy encouraged competition for the FutureGen project. Illinois taxpayers reportedly paid more than $1.5 million to lure FutureGyp, er, FutureGen to Mattoon, a state official said Wednesday in a report from The Southern’s Springfield Bureau. That $1.5 million total doesn’t even include the salaries of state workers assigned to the project, according to spokeswoman Marcelyn Love of the state Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity.

The project was described as having the potential to help ease our nation’s energy dependence on foreign oil. The Department of Energy encouraged communities to devote money and human resources in pursuit of the project. And then the same Department of Energy inexplicably decides to dismantle or restructure the project because of cost over-runs that pushed the price tag from $800 million to $1.8 billion — never mind that private industry would finance all but the original $800 million bait money dangled by the Department of Energy.

We thought FutureGen was an intriguing public-private consortium with great potential, not a cheap carnival game that only can be won by an insider. Looking back on the $1.5 million Illinois invested in FutureGyp, we probably would have been better off buying our own state’s lottery tickets.

We editor types wonder about many things. Sometimes we ponder the future of newspapers. At other times we concern ourselves with the future of our Web report, which you are reading now.

That’s big picture wondering. We also look at the little pictures, the comics. Or maybe you call ‘em “the funnies.” Years ago, I worked with another editor who had a great system for testing the popularity of comics, puzzles, columns and other features. He’d suddenly keep one out of the paper and see if anyone noticed. If there was no outcry, he’d eliminate the comic, puzzle, column or other feature and use the money elsewhere in the newsroom budget.

It was an effective way to test readership, but I certainly won’t do it with the comic, “The Family Circus.” We left that comic out of today’s paper by mistake. It didn’t take long for my phone to ring.

A reader in Herrin said it was the only comic she likes, but she was very understanding when I apologized and explained we would run two of the cartoons tomorrow. A reader in Benton also told me how much he likes the comic — he clips the cartoons and keeps them in a scrapbook.

That’s loyalty, to say the least.

I haven’t yet received any calls about the other comic we forgot to put in today’s newspaper, “Doonesbury.” Either those folks are more laid-back or they just haven’t noticed it, yet.

It is scheduled to return tomorrow, too.

Sunday would have been a great day for catching up on some work in the yard. The sun was shining and it was warm enough to work comfortably in a sweatshirt and jeans. And it only would have taken a few hours to rake some leaves, pick up branches, prune some low-hanging branches and even trim a few bushes.

I didn’t do any of it. It seemed a better opportunity to enjoy the rarest of pleasures — a January ride on the Harley-Davidson. The daytime high hit 50 degrees, which was much warmer than I’d experienced in January rides of the past. The coldest was 18 degrees in Mason City, Iowa. The chill was excruciating. It was a foolish thing to do, actually, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

My wife and I rode for more than 20 miles, shook off the cold over a good restaurant meal and then rode back home. We ended the day by sitting in front of the fireplace and warming our feet. I never once gave another thought to the delayed yard work.

The work is still waiting for me. The work will have more patience about the delayed labor than I would have about looking back on a missed motorcycle ride.

Opportunities delayed are opportunities lost.