New England’s Petty, Vindictive Ex
The Monday Blueprint 2.24.25: The February Break Edition
Here are some financial resources for wildfire victims.
The Monday Blueprint is a bit different today, because, well, it’s February break. We did our monthly household budget over the weekend, and the last thing I wanted to look at was more numbers. So you all get a stock market report reprieve today. But we’ll be back at it with tomorrow’s GratiTuesday and Friday’s Footnote.
Before arriving in New Hampshire, I lived in Ohio, Nebraska, Indiana, and Wyoming and had never heard of February break until we moved to Dover. Never understood why the schools took this break. Like, what the heck man, just power through.
If you are originally from New England you probably already know this, but New Hampshire is not the only state to keep a February vigil. Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, parts of Connecticut, some random districts in New York, and the more northern parts of Michigan all take a February break. The February break is a Northeastern and Upper Midwest phenomenon, with New England the most hardcore.
The rest of the country they just push through winter like normal people.
And when we lived in Wyoming, the snow and winter were whole different beasts. For ten years I’ve driven the New Hampshire byways, saw the “stupid” This Car Climbed Mount Washington bumper stickers. Mount Washington is only 6,288 feet high and I say only because in Wyoming we only lived at 7,222 feet and were inside a valley. In Wyoming, they never even plow the streets because the snow never goes away, compacting into a frozen death crust until nature decides to thaw sometime around June. I used to cycle to work in negative thirty degrees. No lie.
New Hampshire snow still wants to ruin your day, just in a different way. The snow is wetter, heavier, and pretends to melt only to refreeze overnight into an ice rink designed to snap your ankles. Wyoming winters are silent, unmovable forces of nature; you respect or suffer. New Hampshire winters are like that petty, vindictive ex who keeps returning.
So why the heck the February break?
The early months of 1973 were already showing signs of an energy squeeze—largely due to rising fuel prices, increased global demand, and supply chain issues. This wasn’t the full-blown crisis that hit in October when OPEC placed an embargo on the U.S. and other nations that supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War. But we thought at the time, maybe we had hit “peak oil” and long-term resource depletion. The crisis wasn’t just seen as a political or an economic issue.
Geologist M. King Hubbert back in 1956 predicted that U.S. oil production would peak in 1970, and by 1973 U.S. oil production had indeed started declining. The Nixon Administration and energy experts warned that the modern world was ending. The crisis led to fuel efficiency standards, lower speed limits, and investments in nuclear and renewable energy. The Carter administration pushed heavily for solar energy, synthetic fuels, and energy independence based on these fears. He installed solar panels on the top of the White House—which Reagan quickly removed to show solidarity with the oil and gas people.
We can also kind of talk about Nixon’s 1971 move to take the U.S. dollar off the gold standard. When Nixon abandoned the gold standard, the dollar immediately took a nose dive, and because oil was priced in U.S. dollars, countries like Saudi Arabia were losing purchasing power and couldn’t buy as many cool things from Europe. Because the dollar was weaker, OPEC raised prices. Eventually, in 1974, the U.S. struck a deal with Saudi Arabia and later OPEC to price oil exclusively in U.S. dollars in return for military support and economic incentives. This solidified the petrodollar system, ensuring continued demand for U.S. dollars but also reinforcing OPEC’s control over global energy markets—if you were ever curious as to why we’re always mucking about in the Middle East and have military bases all over the world, that would be why, to keep our oil-backed greenbacks strong not only abroad but here at home as well.
So anyway, here we are in February 1973, amid skyrocketing oil costs and concerns about dwindling fuel supplies. New Hampshire made a drastic decision: let’s shut down the public schools for a week to conserve heating fuel. New Hampshire was particularly vulnerable due to its reliance on oil for heating homes during harsh winters (we still are if anything again happens to that supply), and since schools were among the largest energy consumers in any community, closing them was a practical emergency measure.
We know February break now as just February Break, but those older than me probably remember terms like Engery Break or Fuel Week. Even after the oil crisis subsided, schools and municipalities found that taking the February break saved money on heating costs in general during one of the coldest months of the year.
Plus, the break sits about halfway between Christmas/Winter break and April spring break. And as much as there is no real comparison between Wyoming and New England, February sucks up here—why we have so many snowbirds, I’m sure. The snow is old and nasty, it’s freezing but not festive anymore. And the ski industry rakes in the cash.
Hey, I know last week I promised a crazy wild essay about Musk and what’s going on in Washington, but from the moment that I conceived that essay idea, by the time the end of last week so much went down I had to throw out my original draft and start fresh. Trust me, you’ll want to read this when it drops.
We too are implementing some logistical changes at the Coffee With Steve newsletter--adding yet another edition. The Saturday Rundown. But, also breaking the newsletter into sections that you will be able to subscribe to and unsubscribe from as you like. We’ll be uploading all the old Mailchimp editions to Substack as well. Every Saturday, The Rundown will deliver links to all the week's published content.
This way you can keep me in your inbox as much or as little as you want. And, if you do ever unsubscribe, I promise, we’ll still be friends.
Question of the Week
🌨️❄️⛄Where were you (or your family) during the Blizzard of ’781? Or do you have any legendary winter survival stories?
An earlier version of this Monday Blueprint asked about the Blizzard of ‘76. Too many people on Facebook were like, “Do you mean ‘78?” To be clear, I distinctly remember the Blizzard of ‘76. I was three years old, my earliest memory to be exact. My brother and I were super sick—I don’t know with what, I think pneumonia? We were bundled in 17,000 coats, hats, mittens, socks, blankets. Placed on a dogsled hitched to a snowmobile and rushed to the hospital. This happened in Ohio. But yeah, the Blizzard of ‘78, that happened here in New England.