1. It’s Thursday, January 19, 2017. It’s the birthday of Paula Deen and Thomas Kinkade.

2. It’s the last full day of the Obama administration. Also the last full day of presidential dignity.

3. Trump’s Cabinet nominees have shown few signs of surprise competence in the Senate hearings.

I’m sure that, depending on what issues are most important to you, there’s a most infuriating one in the bunch.

My vote is Betsy DeVos, the pretty much uneducated choice for Secretary of Education.

Having just helped two children all the way to their college degrees, education is clearly important to me.

Particularly public education. I happen to live in a slightly above average suburban school district. There certainly are better ones. But, as certainly, there are worse.

The idea should be that all of them can improve. Especially those that are underperforming. Education can inspire kids to achieve beyond their circumstances, and is a source of satisfaction in and of itself.

But DeVos seems to be convinced that public schools, if they’re to be tolerated, should be made to enforce a value set – her value set – which includes religious beliefs that many Americans, perhaps a majority, don’t share.

Her Senate hearing was a comedy of errors. She doesn’t know much about student loans, even though the federal government is the largest provider of them. She doesn’t much about for-profit universities, which she would need to regulate. She doesn’t understand rules about special education, which is essential to children with disabilities and challenges.

And she doesn’t understand much about violence in schools, making the laughable statement that guns should be allowed in schools in case a grizzly bear attacks.

DeVos will be approved. She and her family, the people who inflicted Amway upon the world, have donated too much money to Republican lawmakers over the years for them to turn their backs on her now.

But parents and others concerned about the quality of schools in their area – that should be, but isn’t always, everyone – are going to have to cope with four years of no help from the federal government.

That seems unfair if your kids are going through their formative education years. I wish things were different.

1. It’s Wednesday, January 18, 2017. It’s the birthday of Daniel Webster and Martin O’Malley.

President Obama leaves office with a 60% approval rating, according to a CNN poll out this morning. 

He’s probably rolling his eyes at the news, thinking where were you when I needed you?

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that a lot of people don’t like your successor. But people who haven’t completely bought into the Obama-hating crowd of the past eight years take a look at the record. And on net, they feel pretty good.

I’ll talk more about this in the next few days.

3. Obama did manage to piss some folks off yesterday.

He did it by commuting the 35-year prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, a former Army intelligence specialist who divulged documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to WikiLeaks. Instead of being released in 2045, Manning will get out of prison in four months.

Republicans are crying hypocrisy. They wonder how those who advocate leniency for Manning can turn around and complain about WikiLeaks’ publication of the e-mails of the Democratic National Committee and former Hillary Clinton campaign chief John Podesta.

Somehow, this seems really simple to me.

Chelsea Manning isn’t being pardoned. She is having her sentence commuted. She has served about seven years in a military prison.

Manning has been held to account. She has admitted wrongdoing. She has apologized for her actions.

She didn’t run away to Moscow (see Snowden, Edward). She didn’t hide in a Bolivian embassy (see Assange, Julian). She didn’t order the hacking of American citizens for nefarious purposes (see Putin, Vladimir).

And she didn’t attempt to capitalize on the material leaked and brag how important it was (see Trump)

I’m not excited about Manning’s release. She did something terrible, and she’s no hero to me. As Snowden is no hero, either.

But here’s the thing: At least Chelsea Manning accepted the consequences of her actions. Her beef was with the severity of the sentence and the rough treatment she received, largely because she was also transgender.

So I also don’t have a problem with her pending release. I can understand if you feel more needed to be extracted. But I don’t.

And I admit to being glad to know the information she revealed – confirming, as I always believed, the war in Iraq was bogus and stupid.

By the way, there’s been no accountability for the travesty that was Iraq. It left more than 4,000 Americans dead, thousands more crippled physically and emotionally, spurred the rise of ISIS and destabilized the Middle East.

That seems a lot more heinous than anything Chelsea Manning did.

1. It’s Tuesday, January 17, 2017.

2. It’s the birthday of the two of the three most admired women in America: Michelle Obama and Betty White. Hillary Clinton’s birthday is in October.

3. As long as I can remember, the incoming president spent the months between his election and Jan. 20 trying to reach out to the part of the nation that didn’t vote for him.

In that way, the inauguration becomes a celebration for as much of the nation as possible, which gives the new president a launching pad for his agenda.

Obviously, it doesn’t always work. Barack Obama had a huge approval rating when he took office. He had met with his vanquished opponent, John McCain, shortly after Election Day. And with an all-star concert at the Lincoln Memorial, Aretha and Yo-Yo Ma performing at the inauguration, and Beyoncé singing “At Last” at the first dance, there was a pretty good vibe.

But Republicans were determined to stop him for accomplishing as much as he wanted – and, with the help of the financial hole his predecessor dug, they did a pretty good job of it.

Now here comes Trump. Both the CNN/ORC and Washington Post/ABC polls out this morning put his approval rating at 40%. That’s 44 points behind Obama in the 2008 CNN poll. 

And the reason is simple. Trump has done nothing – absolutely nothing – in the past two months to heal the wounds he helped inflict.

He has picked a Cabinet of rogues and self-interested jerks.

He has continued to attack the media and even the woman he beat, even though she has swallowed her pride and said she will attend the inauguration as is customary for former First Ladies.

Maybe things will work in reverse. Maybe Trump will win everybody over.

Nah. That ain’t happening. This is going to be a very bumpy ride.

1. It’s Monday, January 16, 2017.

2. Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

It is a day to celebrate.

Celebrate a life devoted to justice. Celebrate the idea that in America, we work on improving the imperfect and righting the wrong. Celebrate the diversity of our nation and the way the differences work together to make a stronger, more imaginative whole.

And here’s how powerful these ideas are. Dr. King lived just 39 years. He died 49 years ago – a longer span than his lifetime – and there are those among us who believe his ideals of peaceful protest and advocating for people who aren’t getting a fair shake have more power than ever before.

The election didn’t change that. Hopefully, it rekindled that in the complacent and informed the young.

There’s plenty of reason to dread what happens after Friday. But Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a reminder than even the brutality of racial hatred can be confronted and conquered.

It starts – emphasis on the starts – with the force of a chorus of millions singing “We Shall Overcome.” Then keep going from there.

I hope all of us reflect on this day and recommit to living lives dedicated to helping others and attaining justice. Have a great MLK Day!

3. Two things I thought about reading President Obama’s interview with New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani:

— How did this guy find time to read all the books he mentions and still run the country? He is the epitome of the literate person taking what he reads to heart and mind in everyday life.

Would that we all?

— I have the over/under on the number of books Obama mentions in the interview that Trump has read at zero.

3. If you don’t understand how much of an American hero John Lewis is, take off your flag lapel pin and take your flag off your car and house. Because you don’t fully understand what that flag stands for.

Yes, the flag represents thousands of men and women who died in wars and skirmishes.

But it also represents the pursuit of justice and the willingness of some brave men and women to endure hardship and pain to achieve it.

John Lewis is awe inspiring. And if you read the reaction to what happened this weekend, you can see that even many of those who disagree with his comments about Trump respectfully understand that.

Which is why Trump picked on the wrong man.

There’s more courage and honor in John Lewis’ fingernail than Trump has in his whole body.

I was thrilled that the result of the Trump Twitter tantrum was Lewis’ books selling out on Amazon. But I don’t think the commercial reward means as much to a man with the integrity of John Lewis as the understanding that millions of his fellow Americans appreciate who he is and what he stands for.

If you want to figure out what makes America great, start with John Lewis. And work down from there.

1. It’s Thursday, January 12, 2017.

2. It’s the birthday of Christiane Amanpour and the 48th anniversary of the New York Jets’ Super Bowl III win over the Baltimore Colts.

3. Of course I’m going to say Trump’s behavior toward CNN and reporter Jim Acosta at yesterday’s news conference was despicable.

I worked at CNN for 16 years and I know how hard everyone in the organization – myself included back in the day – strived for objectivity and fairness.

If I still worked at CNN, I – as the hundreds of men and women in the network’s newsrooms around the world do every day – would have to bite back my anger and report on this slander fairly and without prejudice.

But I left CNN in October 2014 and I can say what I want.

And what I want to say is Trump and the jackasses and jennyasses who work for him are compulsive liars.

CNN did not report the details of the material in the briefing on possible Russian blackmail that Trump and President Obama received. That was BuzzFeed.

I don’t think BuzzFeed should have reported the details, because they’re not substantiated. BuzzFeed knew that and published it anyway. CNN knew that and didn’t.

Here’s the other thing: Trump confirmed what CNN reported. He said the accusations should have never been put to paper – indicated, as CNN did, that they were in fact put to paper.

So his beef is that CNN reported something that actually happened.

Is this going to be a thing with this malevolent clown for as long as he’s president? Because he’s going to have problems.

Other organizations were reluctant to come to CNN’s defense at the travesty of a news conference.

But give credit to whom credit is due. Acosta says Cecilia Vega of ABC asked the question about whether Trump’s people had contact with the Russians during the campaign, which Trump denied. And Shepard Smith of Fox News apparently came to Acosta’s defense during his program.

One more point: The juxtaposition of Trump’s freak show performance with the dignity of President Obama’s farewell address the night before is enough, as I’ve said before, to give Americans the bends.

That, I’m afraid, is where we are as the vandals of the new administration get ready to sack our nation. And the only thing we can do is try to keep them accountable.

And remind them that more people voted for Hillary Clinton than voted for Trump.

By the way, what would happen if, at exactly 10:40 a.m. EST on Jan. 20, everyone who wants Trump’s tax returns other than journalists tweeted him directly?

1. It’s Wednesday, January 11, 2017. It’s the birthday of Alexander Hamilton and Clarence Clemons.

2. Because I’m a journalism professor, I feel compelled to say this about the latest Trump development:

We don’t know the truth. So it is not ethical to jump to a conclusion. Even the intelligence chiefs who told Trump and President Obama about the claims aren’t certain they’re true.

Buzzfeed is well within its journalistic privilege to publish what it says is the report given by the intelligence community. If it is.  As a CNN alumnus, I am inclined to believe its reporting on this. 

So I’ll leave the elimination jokes – funny as some of them are – to others.

Here’s what I think is really important to keep in mind:

— Trump’s initial response to this matter – an all-caps tweet decrying fake news and a witch hunt – is idiotic.

Either he doesn’t understand the gravity of what he and his campaign are being accused of, or he understands it and thinks he can whistle past the graveyard with the same strategy that got him elected.

Not this time.

Unless he makes a serious refutation of the reports, or a serious admission to inappropriate behavior, he will not be to reassure the rest of the world that the leader of the United States isn’t a WikiLeaks revelation away from humiliation.

The people in the Baltics and in Ukraine need to know that Putin can’t blackmail Trump – this isn’t a joke to them.

— Trump’s first opportunity to refute these stories comes at tomorrow’s scheduled news conference.

He has to take that seriously; he can’t talk about dishonest media and witch hunts and fake news. He has to address the facts.

I’m not betting he will.

—  There will be some who believe the intelligence community is getting back at Trump for his recent criticism of their belief that the Russians hacked into our election.

But revealing this information doesn’t make these people look good or heroic. It makes them look bad.

It is information they should have known well before the American people voted on Nov. 8.

And it is information – this is for you, FBI Director James Comey – that far overshadows anything that might have been in a Hillary Clinton e-mail that might have been on Anthony Weiner’s old laptop.

The inability to know precisely whether these allegations are true or not is a monumental failure of organizations that are supposed to protect Americans. If the report on BuzzFeed is accurate, the Russians have been cozying up to Trump and his people for years.

Either they did or they didn’t. Why don’t we know for sure?

And because we don’t, a lot of Americans will question the legitimacy of the man taking the oath of office on Jan. 20.

3. There’s a lot to say about President Obama’s farewell speech in Chicago, and others will say it and say it well.

Here’s what important to remember:

If you watched the speech, either on TV or at McCormick Place, you watched a master of American political oratory. You watched a man whose eloquence shakes a room, who conveys confidence and trust and compassion and strength without screaming or resorting to barbs.

The speech was delivered just after 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Jan. 10.

There will be a speech delivered 231 hours later, just after noon EST on Jan. 20. It will not be given by Barack Obama.

It will be given by Trump, who will have taken the oath of office moments before.

What kind of inauguration speech will this guy give?

Despite its inevitability, it’s hard to imagine.

Will he deliver something carefully written by his people, crafted to address the ideas that brought him to this point?

Is there any chance in the world that it will be conciliatory? Or will it just be another shoutout to the voters who got him there – knowing there are 2,849,974 more who voted for someone else?

Can you imagine him tearing up at the thought of his wife, his third one? Do you imagine him signaling any parental emotion for his daughters and sons?

Or will he wing it, like his victory speech in New York in the early hours of Nov. 9? Will it ramble through incomplete sentences and unfinished thoughts? Will it be a mess? Will it insult certain people?

Will Lincoln and FDR and JFK turn over in their graves hearing it?

Last night, you saw a master of oratory. You saw someone trying to shape a future that he’ll no longer control nearly as much. You saw him try, one more freakin’ time, to reach out to people who don’t agree with him – as futile as that has been, for reasons he described too well.

The difference between 9 p.m. on Jan. 10 and noon on Jan. 20 will be stark. It will symbolize how much our world and especially our nation are about to change.

It will be quite a 231 hours.

1. It’s Tuesday, January 10, 2017. It’s the birthday of Donald Fagen and George Foreman.

2. Why, as a Northwestern alumnus, am I pleased by Clemson’s victory over Alabama in college football’s national championship game?

Because, not two months ago, the same Clemson team suffered its only loss of the season, a 43-42 defeat at the hands of University of Pittsburgh.

And, of course, that would be the Pittsburgh team that lost the Pinstripe Bowl to Northwestern 13 days ago.

Forget the fact that the ‘Cats lost six other games this season. By my reckoning, we’re eight points better than Clemson and 12 better than Alabama.

At least, as a Wildcat fan, I’d like to think so.

3. In a way, I’m kind of surprised Jeff Sessions is on his best behavior at today’s confirmation hearing.

Trumpsters such as Sessions haven’t previously cared much about what the people who don’t agree with them thought.

But here is the Alabama senator, looking to be Trump’s attorney general, denying he’s ever been a racist and, as my former colleague Gregory Wallace at CNN reports, pledging to recuse himself in any witch hunt investigation of Hillary Clinton.

Lots of civil rights groups staunchly oppose Sessions. But the deck is stacked. It’ll take a major faux pas for Sessions not to be confirmed – that’s the best hope of a contentious hearing. And he knows that.

4. So President Obama’s farewell speech is tonight in Chicago.

Most of his supporters find the occasion sad, and that’s understandable. Obama has, on balance, been a terrific president – despite facing a withering barrage of opposition that was often based on his race.

But what’s especially great about this man has been his empathy for the people he was elected to serve — and his ability to express that empathy better, perhaps, than anyone who ever held the office.

(Note: We don’t have a tape of Lincoln. But no one ever would have thought Obama the second best speaker at any event, unlike Lincoln; at the Gettysburg battlefield consecration, everybody went to hear Edward Everett.)

I think I’m curious to hear whether or not Obama sets himself up to be the guy Americans run to when Trump pisses them off. Will Obama leave something oratorically that makes him the shadow president after noon on Jan. 20?

He’s only 55 years ago, 15 years younger than the guy succeeding him. And their mutual contempt isn’t any secret.

Plus much of what Obama accomplished is at great peril. I’m betting the Republicans ignore the warnings of some of their own and trash this incredible accomplishment. It’s their Holy Grail. It doesn’t matter who it hurts – they perceive that their people hate it, and that’s their ticket.

So listen carefully tonight to what Barack Obama says in his last scheduled address to the nation. It will be done beautifully. It will sing. And we’ll find out if it means more than just a valedictory.

1. It’s Monday, January 9, 2017. It’s the birthday of Richard Nixon and Dave Matthews.

2. Normally, new presidents attempt to unify the country before they assume the office.

Trump’s not even pretending to do that.

The Cabinet he’s chosen is almost as despicable a bunch as any of the people Hillary Clinton called out in that now-infamous speech last September.

An attorney general nominee whose racism is a matter of record. An education secretary nominee who hates public schools. A secretary of state nominee who’s cozy with the Russians who hacked into our election process.

And now, with the confirmation process at hand, the Republicans who run the Congress – the Senate in particular – are trying to railroad these nominees through. The Office of Congressional Ethics complains that the Trump people have stalled effort to vet these nominees, many of whom are among the wealthiest in the nation.

One way to get these people through is to hold as many hearings at the same time as possible as quickly as possible. The rationale being that it’s harder to get that godawful soundbite of nominee X being challenged by Democratic Senator Y if there’s so much to choose from.

Journalists, already a diminished class in the new Trump order, face a tough task holding these people accountable. And the question becomes one of logistics: Do you focus on the higher-profile people, such as Jeff Sessions and Rex Tillerson, or cover all of them and dilute your effort somewhat?

3. I vote for full coverage, and I don’t know that there has to be any dilution.

CNN, MSNBC and CBSN are big enough to cover multiple congressional hearings, a Trump news conference if he crawls out of his cocoon long enough and whatever else happens that day.

It’s amazing, frankly, how much talent these networks have, some of it not especially famous. I know this from experience.

And if the reputable networks feel as though they need help, there are resources with which they can team. The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, which despite its Murdochian ownership still shows some reporting integrity.

But these confirmation hearings require full, thorough coverage. They also require serious challenges – from Democratic opponents and the few Republicans with the guts to get at the facts and truth.

It is understood that there is little chance any of Trump’s nominees won’t be confirmed. But the extremity of their viewpoints and, in some cases, their lack of respect for all of the American people – another reminder that 2,864,974 more people voted for Clinton than her opponent – make it imperative that they at least get their positions on record.

4. The 19th-century artists of the Hudson River School movement would cringe if they saw the Indian Power nuclear power plant in New York.

For some stupid reason, in the late 1950s, people got the idea to build a hideous nuclear power plant in an iconic place of beauty. If you drive along U.S. 9W headed for Bear Mountain State Park, the whole experience is marred by this eyesore across the river.

Not to mention that, like other nuclear plants, people have never been especially comfortable about the safety. In my kitchen drawer are the emergency evacuation plans occasionally distributed by local authorities. And I’m about 10 miles south and west of the plant across the Hudson.

So I’m really happy that Gov. Andrew Cuomo is finally putting the padlock on Indian Point. He’s announcing that the plant will close in 2021, ending decades of worry about natural disasters, mechanical problems, terrorism and inconsistent reliability.

Now, what I’d really like to see is the state and local authorities tear down the facility and restore the land to blend in with the beauty around it. The Hudson River Valley is magnificent, and sometime in the late 2020s, it might even be better without Indian Point.

It’s January 6, 2017. It’s the Twelfth Day of Christmas, the Feast of the Epiphany.

And it’s Friday, which means it’s time for the first 20 Questions Friday of the new year. The format is, however, the same: I ask questions that you might or might not choose to answer.

With 51 weeks to go in this year, here we go with this:

— Does Putin think the effort invested in helping Trump was worth it?

— What can the average American do to get the Russians back?

— Did any of the Trump critics who said don’t fall for his daily Twitter distraction heed their own advice this morning?

— To my fellow residents of New York’s northern suburbs: Don’t you love it when the bad winter weather is south of here?

— Is Octavia Spencer going to be in every movie from now on?

— Is anybody surprised that it took six days for the first mass shooting in the United States this year?

— Does the National Rifle Association have a 24/7/365 response team whenever a mass shooting occurs ready to pooh pooh the fact there are too many guns in this country?

— Are travelers just a little bit more patient with airlines on a day when they have to deal with weather problems and an airport shooting?

— Is the link in this question the first you’ve heard about the possibility that Gambia’s West African neighbors are on the verge of invading? 

— Did anybody think the Mexico wall thing was going to go exactly the way Trump promised?

— How long do you think your gym will be crowded with would-be New Year’s resolution keepers before they start to give up?

— Does anybody seriously believe Hillary Clinton wants to run for mayor of New York?

— Does it really matter if the Dow Jones industrial average reaches 20,000?

— Have you taken down your holiday decorations?

— I’m not normally a violent person, but does anybody else want to smack Julian Assange silly?

— Didn’t you know (you’d have to cry sometime)? (eighteenth in a series of song-title questions)

— Wouldn’t it be cool if a big “La La Land”-type dance production number actually broke out when you were sitting in traffic going nowhere?

— Who else couldn’t care less about the Golden Globes?

— Is drinking egg nog after New Year’s Day like wearing white after Labor Day?

— Has anybody started doing their taxes yet?

1. It’s Wednesday, January 4, 2017.

At this point in a year, it takes a good deal of effort to make sure the date is correct. Eventually, the idea that it’s 2017 will become second nature.

2. The derailment of a Long Island Rail Road train in Brooklyn this morning, injuring more than 100 people, is the second such incident in the New York area in recent months. 

Like the New Jersey Transit incident in Hoboken in September, the commuter train crashed through a barrier at its final stop. Fortunately, in today’s incident, no one was killed; one person standing on the platform died in Hoboken.

We don’t know what caused today’s incident. While the cause of what happened in Hoboken is still being determined, there was an AP report in November stating that investigators are looking into the idea that the engineer had undiagnosed sleep apnea. 

So we have two problems to consider here. One – train safety – has to be solved by government. The other – sleeping disorders – probably needs to be something society takes more seriously.

3. Let’s start with train safety.

People who live in some of the biggest metropolitan areas – New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington among them – might find this hard to believe. But most Americans have no idea what a commuter train is.

Train lines such as the Long Island Rail Road in New York, METRA in Chicago and MBTA in Boston serve thousands of people. The cities where they’re based are crippled when trains don’t run for whatever reason – system problems, labor actions or bad weather.

So we need them.

But we hate them. Most of these lines, particularly those in the East, are antiquated. The stations are often ill-equipped to handle the people who want to use them – parking is inadequate and service can be slow and uncomfortable.

If Trump is serious about infrastructure, this would be a prime target. Not only do the older lines need to be spruced up, but metropolitan areas such as Atlanta and Houston need to actually build lines. And there must be technological ways to make events like the one this morning almost impossible.

That takes money, and the people who elected Trump in places where there are no trains probably don’t care how difficult the commute is for someone in Hicksville, N.Y., or Highland Park, Ill.,  or Humble, Texas.

So here’s Trump’s dilemma. He can score points with suburbanites he needs to help him get re-elected in 2020 by making their commutes a little better. Or he can keep the outlying areas happy by not spending their money making commuter trains to Brooklyn safer.

The bonus to an overhaul of the nation’s commuter rail systems, including better trains and more safety features, is that it creates jobs. Lots of them.

In fact, that’s what President Obama had in mind with his original stimulus proposal, when the economy was in the dumps. It seems as though he got a lot of the roads he wanted – the mass transit, not so much.

This country’s infrastructure needs a lot. Not just transportation, but water and electricity are in dire need. We need to develop 21st century methods of delivery that include protection against potential terrorism. In the next few months, we’ll see how serious the self-proclaimed master builder is.

4. The other problem is sleep.

That might be the next great health crusade. We’ve gone after smoking, drugs, alcohol, sugar, soda/pop and food in general.

Again, we don’t know for sure that sleep problems caused either of the most recent train derailments in the New York area. But a sleep problem is blamed for the 2013 fatal crash of a Metro North train in the Bronx.

Sleep – or lack of it – is a special problem on the highways. The latest National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data, from 2005, shows that about 100,000 accidents are caused by drowsy driving annually. About 1,550 deaths result.

And again, this data’s more than a decade old – given the propensity of people to stay up all night playing video games and surfing social media, could those numbers be higher in 2017?

So what might be in order this year is a campaign to get people to sleep.

And that’s going to be harder than getting them to stop anything else – smoking, drinking, junk food, whatever.

There are two kinds of people. People who love to sleep, and would sleep all day if life allowed them.

And then there’s folks like me. I hate to sleep. I’m always wondering what the hell I’m missing.

When I worked at CNN, I was lucky to get four hours a night. With my job and my family obligations and the things I really wanted to do, sleep was an impediment.

And, for the most part, I functioned.

Except that if I stayed out late at a family function or a ballgame on the weekends, I would put myself and my family at risk by being drowsy as I drove. I still rarely drink alcohol when I go somewhere – not because there’s a risk of driving while intoxicated, but because even the slightest amount might push me over the sleep edge on the highway.

I don’t think I’m alone in this. There are workaholics galore out there, and our society favors those who are awake a lot. Plus there are people who can’t put down the iPhone or laptop.

And lack of sleep doesn’t only affect driving ability. It has a great deal to do with health issues such as obesity and diabetes.

So a national campaign to get people to sleep more would be a curious thing. But it might also be a necessary thing. There are organizations – such as the National Sleep Foundation – that promote it. 

As my friends and family would note, I am an unusual advocate for sleep. But, especially seeing these train accidents and wondering about how they happened, and knowing how my body functions, I think the time is right for a real push on getting people to sleep the amount they should.