Maybe you are in sunny California, or some other part of the world where the rigors of winter are not currently affecting you, but here in the Midwest we are getting hammered. Following two weeks off for the holidays, our office was scheduled to reopen this morning, but Mother Nature had other ideas, I guess.

One hundred and fifty years ago today, a tall thin man, weak and dizzy from an as yet undiagnosed case of smallpox, rose from a temporary platform to face a crowd of onlookers beneath a cold and drizzly gray sky. He was there to deliver “a few remarks” in dedication of an as yet unfinished cemetery. The previous speaker was Edward Everett renowned orator and the the main featured attraction that bleak morning.