WELCOME TO THE BOWL: Up here in the Northeast, we’re just entered the heart of the winter season. If you look at a chart showing the average temperature per day throughout the winter (which I’ve thoughtfully attached), you will see that it looks a lot like a bumpy soup bowl. Temperatures slide downward pretty steeply through November and December and on into January. Then right around the 15th, they flatten out. On average, it doesn’t get any colder, but it doesn’t really start getting warmer either. It just stays cold for a month (and keeps on snowing most of the time). Then, right around the middle of February, the warming trend kicks in and average temps finally start rising, continuing on into March and April and thus heralding the arrival of spring.

So we’ve just hit the bottom of the bowl here. If you’re thin like me and don’t take too well to the cold, it’s not much to look forward to. A whole darn month to wait out until things start getting better. The only encouragement available for now is in the evening, when you notice that the sun stays up maybe 10 or 15 minutes longer than back around Christmas. The mornings are still awfully dark (I never knew that sunrises and sunsets are out of synch; the earliest sunset occurs around December 15, whereas the latest sunrise waits until January 1; the shortest day, however, occurs right in-between, on December 21st).

Is it any coincidence that our nation’s biggest sporting event, the Super Bowl, occurs right in the middle of the temperature bowl? Football is ultimately a cultural phenomenon, and culture is definitely driven by its environment. So as you watch a team (the Eagles?) drive up past the 50 yard line, perhaps you’re subconsciously thinking about your life slowly making its way across the flat bottom of your own winter of discontent.

Well, then again, maybe not.

SILLY SEASON STARTS: OK, so it’s time once more for the Democrats to pick a Presidential candidate. I previously expressed my positive opinions regarding Howard Dean. And I still like the guy. But to be honest, I’m having a lot of second thoughts, wondering whether he’s the next McGovern or Dukakis (the Democrats have a flair for nominating well-intentioned people that our heartland couldn’t ever take seriously; the Republicans haven’t strayed far from the mainstream since Goldwater in ’64). I read today that his wife has thus far taken almost no interest in his campaign. She mostly wants to stay in Vermont and be an aging hippie doctor. My kind of gal. But not the kind of woman who can help draw the attention of all those swing voters in Ohio and New Hampshire (so much like Vermont and yet so different) and Oregon and West Virginia who will make or break the Democrats (so far, it looks like “break”). She’s not exactly the “stand by your man and your Bible” type.

I hate to say it – maybe I’m just having Clinton flashbacks – but after watching one of the debates the other night, John Edwards by far looks the most like a President (Mr. Edwards’ wife is in fact campaigning for him). Gephardt comes across like a perpetual member of the House, and Kerry looks like an ersatz member of the Kennedy family. Sorry, but rightly or wrongly, the world isn’t ready for a President Al Sharpton yet, nor for a President Lieberman, nor (most unfortunately) for a President Moseley-Braun. General Clark is obviously trying to lock up the VP slot.

Perhaps Dean is close to the brass ring, but if there is to be a darkhorse charging up from behind in the primaries, I’d say that it’ll be Edwards, not Gephardt. We shall see — could be an interesting year (up to convention time, anyway).