Last weekend, it was very cold. The weather prompted many locals to proudly post onto social media clever phrases and memes alluding to the toughness of North Dakotans and Minnesotans.
The general theme of these postings was that such weather would ruin people not from here, but we (North Dakotans and Minnesotans) are impervious to twenty below.
I wonder. Certainly, there are many among us who are indifferent to Arctic cold. I count myself among the cold-hardy. But many of us refuse to get into a car until it is remotely started and thoroughly warmed up. WDAY-TV was running a cancellation crawl Sunday morning with more than two dozen church cancellations due to the cold. This is not, in any way, to suggest that these decisions were right or wrong. Rather, this is an illustration of the fact that our society is changing.
It is quite possible that we, as a whole, are not as winter hardy as our Northern parents and grandparents.
