How cold was the coldest winter in Minnesota?

I stopped into the local Irish pub tonight to grab a beer and watch the Timberwolves game.  The Wolves were in form.  They kept the game within 20 points against the juggernaut Utah Jazz until the final minutes.  If it wasn’t within the final 10 games of the season, if I wasn’t an absolute glutton for punishment in following my favorite NBA team, and if a decent question hadn’t arisen, it would have been a total dud of a Monday.  As it happened, as almost always at the local pub, you start shooting the bull, and it turned out that the fellow next to me had moved to Minneapolis from Alabama.  The guy had moved to Minnesota in December.  Shockingly, he thought the past winter had been pretty cold.  That got me to wonder what was the coldest winter in Minnesota?  How does this year stack up?  I’m clearly running out of steam on this project, but here it goes.

First, it appears that weather data in Minnesota has been collected since 1820.  That initially strikes me as pretty wild.  In 1820 there were 22 states, Minnesota did not come into the Union until 1858 as the 32nd state.  Apparently the weather in Minnesota was a concern back then too, it must have taken 38 years before a livable winter came along and Washington gave the go-ahead to add a state in “The North”.  So, anyhow, there is a slew of weather data.  How cold can it get?

In January 1888, the temperature in Minneapolis dipped to -41 Fahrenheit.  That’s a pretty cold day.  “According to the National Weather Service, frostbite can occur within 5 minutes in temperatures between 0 degrees and -19 degrees Fahrenheit.”  So, getting out of the sod house that day would have been a bad idea, but it must have been a fluky day, right?  Sadly, as I am finding out now, it wasn’t.  Apparently “a series of phenomena, including the eruption of the Indonesian volcano Krakatoa in August, 1883, created an atmospheric shield against solar radiation that plunged the globe into the deep freeze from 1882 to 1888. In the long gaze of history, the powerful blizzard of Jan. 12, 1888 was a final exclamation point.”  That final explanation point was “The Children’s Blizzard”.  I think my Mom read that book and told me about it.  I’d forgotten and feel like kind of a punk now trivializing the temperature in my stupid weather post.  That was a real tragedy.  I’ve got to regroup, though, and I lived through the arctic vortex of 2014, so 1888 had the coldest day, but was it the coldest winter on record in Minneapolis?

Those of us who lived in Minneapolis in the winter of 2014 were not alone in thinking that we had just endured unrivaled misery temperature-wise, but, amazingly we were wrong.  So says “Minneapolis/St. Paul Expert” Clara James, “[t]he coldest winter season in Minneapolis/St. Paul . . . was 1874-75 with an average temperature of just 4 Fahrenheit.”  What’s more, “[a]nd how does 2013-2014 measure up? As of February 28, the average temperature was 9.7 Fahrenheit, putting it in contention for one of the top ten coldest winters on record for the Twin Cities.”  So, it was pretty cold, just not singularly cold. 

This year then?  I remember a couple of days that may have dipped below zero this year, but what’s the average temperature been like?  Apparently Minneapolis averaged around 18 Fahrenheit this winter and was on the warmer end of the spectrum.  I noticed it, but to someone from Alabama, I could see how it would seem cold, their average winter temp this year was around 43 degrees.  So, I guess in the end, this year was not really cold in Minnesota.  Hope if I move to Arizona in July and remark that it seems hot in the summer that someone doesn’t take me for ill-informed.

Is it only in this era that government funds have been used to construct athletic stadiums?

Living in Minneapolis, one of the facts of life that a person who consumes local sports news will have to deal with is a never-ending hue and cry regarding stadiums.  Talk of athletic facilities is everywhere, and strangely, for a conversation that really centers only upon big buildings and money, there can be a lot of (for lack of a better term) sex-appeal in the discussions.  The fabulously wealthy are always a good headline source, and when you can throw in highly visible athletes and sports teams, local and state politicians, matters of civic pride mixed in with general income inequality and tax policy issues, the mixture can become pretty volatile. 

Stadium talk is currently in the news because of the recent award of a Major League Soccer franchise to Minnesota, subject to the caveat that the team needs to build an 18,000 seat downtown Minneapolis soccer-specific stadium before it can join the league in 2017.  The expected cost for the proposed stadium is $150 to $200 million dollars.  Clearly that is a lot of money.  So in this current stadium debate there has been a lot of pro and con discussion in the media, some grandstanding by politicians who vow that ‘this time we are taking a stand’, cameos by billionaire owners/partners, and an appearance by all of the platitudes that surround soccer in general (the passionate, urbane audience, the worldwide game with a domestic league gaining in popularity, the fact that it’s not American football, and all the rest).  The forthcoming chatter around this stadium ought to be pretty good.  That is until reality sets in.  The stadium will get taxpayer funding, it will be built and eventually seen as an asset to the community.  That’s just the way the stadium debates always end up.

I am not passionate about Minneapolis’s current or past stadium debates.  In my mind they all involve a lot of air and ink being spent on pro and con arguments that are ultimately pretty meaningless.  I am curious, however, about how long stadium debates have been going on?  It seems to me like there is a pretty myopic idea that new stadiums and arenas are some sort of personal property for the team that primarily occupies them, has that always been the case?  This should be riveting.  I’m only going to focus on baseball stadiums.  It’s the American pastime after all.

First I checked out Fenway Park and Wrigley Field, they were built in 1912 and 1914, respectively, but I was not able to find much on how construction of those ballparks was financed.  I was hoping to find archived newspaper articles from those cities decrying the owners for their greed, but no such luck.  Amazingly the next oldest ballpark in use today is Dodger Stadium, a full 50 years newer than Fenway. 

Dodger Stadium was finished in 1962, and while Wikipedia reports that it was financed using private funding, looking at the stadium’s history shows that local government was not sitting by idly as the noble private financiers built their ballpark.  Per the site “The land for Dodger Stadium was purchased from local owners and inhabitants in the early 1950s by the city of Los Angeles using eminent domain with funds from the Federal Housing Act of 1949.”  When a planned apartment development was not built on the land[1], the city was able to buy the land from the Federal Housing Authority for a reduced price.  Eventually the land in the Chavez Ravine area was essentially given to the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers in an effort to lure his team to LA.  When the local government gives land to a professional sports team that seems to me like government funding of a stadium. 

Maybe I’ll just stick in California, like Minnesota it’s another hotbed of stadium construction talk these days, and four Major League Baseball stadiums were built there between 1962 and 1967.  Looking at the construction history of Candlestick Park in San Francisco shows that “[a]s part of the agreement regarding the Giants' relocation to the west coast, the city of San Francisco promised to build a new stadium for the team.”  Across the bay in Oakland, it’s reported that in order to keep up with the Jones’s in San Fran and for the east bay to have a positive self-image, the Oakland Coliseum was built using public funding, which eventually helped Oakland land the Kansas City Athletics.    Down in Anaheim, to convince the Angels to move out of Dodger Stadium, “the city of Anaheim and its mayor, Rex Coons, lured the team with an offer too sweet to refuse: a publicly financed ballpark, a 35-year lease, and the chance to build a new fan base among Orange County's growing population.” The decision by Major League Baseball to award San Diego the Padres in 1969 was also no doubt buffeted by the city’s decision to construct Jack Murphy Stadium with a $27 million dollar municipal bonding measure.  It’s funny, with discussion of NFL teams possibly returning to the LA market, something you always hear is that there will be no appetite for any public assistance for the construction of any stadium in California, given the history of stadium construction there, I don't know how much faith I put in that proposition.  

Is it the cost of stadiums today then that seems to have amplified the idea that spending public dollars on stadiums is abhorrent?  As noted above the proposed soccer stadium in Minneapolis will cost $150 to $200 million dollars.  The under-construction Minnesota Vikings stadium is supported by nearly $500 million dollars in public funding.  That’s a lot of money.  I don’t know that it’s a huge enough increase though to suddenly turn off the spigot and ban the use of government dollars on sporting venues.  A nifty inflation calculator found at dollartimes.com shows that San Diego’s $27 million dollar bond in 1965 would cost it over $200 million in 2015.  That’s a lot of money too. 

Even 50 years ago in stingy California there was public assistance to build stadiums for professional sports teams.  I was hoping to find some salacious newspaper articles from the time that are having their arguments in essence plagiarized by those who are either on the pro or con side of current stadium debates.  Unfortunately that didn’t happen.  I did learn that public funding has been a part of baseball stadium construction for a long time.  For the record, I have no issue with government dollars being used to build sports stadiums.  I think the question is whether a professional sports team is seen by a community as an asset.  If a community values a team, I think it is perfectly fair for the community to put a dollar figure on the cost it is willing to pay to acquire or keep the asset.  Insert your Vikings and Twins jokes here, I guess.

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[1] Wikipedia’s entry on Dodger Stadium includes this line regarding the City of Los Angeles deciding to scrap plans for the proposed housing development, “[p]roposed public housing projects such as Elysian Park Heights lost most of their support as they became associated with socialist ideals.”  There was not a cite for the line, however.  I would have liked to have learned more about the ideologically dangerous design of the housing development.

When was the first NCAA game to be played in a football stadium?  What did the crowd think?  How much were the tickets?

Watching the Duke vs. Utah basketball game on March 27, 2015, in NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas, makes me wonder.  When did the idea of putting an 82 foot court in the middle of a stadium designed around a 120 yard field become a great idea?  Clearly it came about because of ticket sales, but I don’t think I’m alone when positing that it’s not a great look for college basketball to be played in football stadiums.  So what’s the verdict?

A quick glance at Wikipedia shows that “From 1997 to 2013, the NCAA required that all Final Four sessions take place in domed stadiums with a minimum capacity of 40,000[.]”    That’s not a great help.  Anyone who watched the classic Duke vs. UNLV final in 1992 at the Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota knows that the football venue was used before that.  We’ve got to go deeper into the Wiki-sphere. 

Looking at the venues that have hosted NCAA regional finals, conveniently collected by our friends at Wikipedia, it looks to me like the Astrodome in Houston, Texas, the “Eighth Wonder of the World”, is the daddy of NCAA tourney games played in football stadiums.[1]    Per the site, the Houston Astrodome hosted the NCAA Finals in 1971.  This game clearly followed the success of “[t]he Game of the Century between the University of Houston Cougars and the UCLA Bruins took place at the Astrodome in 1968 before a crowd of 52,963 — the record for the largest attendance ever at a basketball game until 2003. The first National Collegiate Athletic Association regular season game broadcast nationwide in prime time[.]”  Apparently the NCAA Finals in 1971 drew an average of 31,000 people per game and was the trend-setter for NCAA finals to come.  That seems fair, I guess, it’s a huge sporting event and why wouldn’t someone with the means and the desire to see the game want to go?  I wonder what folks at the time thought of going to a basketball game in a football stadium?

The NCAA itself acknowledges that “[t]he first Final Four to be held at a dome was in 1971 at Houston’s Astrodome, but the temporary-seating configuration was not available, which resulted in spectators not having clear sightlines to the raised floor.”  Any spectators at the ’71 Finals want to weigh in?[2]  Googling “1971 Finals Astrodome” led me to a great article in the Houston Chronicle.   Apparently if I thought that watching an NCAA game on TV in a football stadium in 2015 was not the best, that had nothing on the first attempt.  “As Joe Jares, who was covering for Sports Illustrated, wrote: ‘The Astrodome was far more suitable for feeding Christians to lions than for basketball.’”  Further it was reported, “[t]he elevated court, intended by the NCAA to deliver the dramatic effect of a boxing ring, instead left fans in many of the most prized expensive seats craning their necks to see anything except the players' upper torsos at the opposite hoop and kept the scrappier, ball-hawking players in a constant state of jeopardy.”  I love those descriptions.  They may be a bit dramatic, but they express, which I like.

Just for fun, how much were the tickets for the 1971 NCAA basketball finals?  Found one on Ebay showing a Mezzanine box for $8.00.  I wasn’t able to find the exact seat map for the Astrodome, but found from the Georgia Dome website that the Mezzanine level is in between the first and second decks, maybe an idea of etymology would have saved that trip, but those are the breaks.  Eight bucks seems like a fair price for that level of seats.  What do they get today?  Ticketmaster shows that seats close to the middle level of the stadium are going to run you $2,300 or so.  I tried to look on Stubhub but, not caring to go watch a basketball game in a building the size of a blimp hangar I lost interest. 

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[1] I’m aware that the Chicago Bears played an indoor game at Chicago Stadium back in the day, but the venue in my mind was never intended to be a football stadium so I’m throwing the 1953 regional finals played there out.

[2] I am writing this sort of stream of conscious, and am feeling a fair amount of glee when I post the next couple of sentences.

Why do television news broadcasts not have to use the TV Parental Guidelines rating system or at least provide a disclaimer when disturbing images are shown? 

          

I awoke this morning, turned on the television to CBS’s morning news and was luckily able to avoid the rundown of the horrible world events that had occurred in the last 24 hours.  When I caught the program it was in the midst of an interview with Aetna Insurance’s new-age CEO, who was discussing how its customers’ ever-rising insurance premiums were being used by the company to provide gourmet cafeterias, massage parlors, and exercise and yoga facilities for Aetna’s over-taxed and stressed employees.  Nearly any story regarding the insurance industry in the United States can be found disturbing on some level - particularly the blithe admission of those in the know that the system is not working, but it’s our system – but this was not the objectionable news item for me.

Following the insurance/new-age work place lionization, the broadcast switched to a story regarding an effort to increase wi-fi bandwidth and “Vehicle to Vehicle” (V2V) technology and the tension between the two.  The premise behind the story is actual journalism and the main reason that I tune into CBS in the morning rather than the schmaltzy morning news shows offered by other networks.  The concept that news regarding proposed Congressional action and how it may impact a current government program is fit for morning consumption is one that I applaud.  I was grateful for the discussion, it made me think.  It was during the discussion of V2V technology, and the imagery used to present the concept, however, that I was left appalled.

Per the CBS story, V2V technology is currently in development and would allow new cars to use a government provided bandwidth to “talk” to each other and help the driver be more aware of nearby traffic and traffic conditions.  The story described that if the technology was in place today studies showed it could reduce traffic accidents by up to 80 percent and prevent more than 1,000 accident-related deaths per year.  I appreciate information in news programming presented to me in a manner that allows me to use facts to determine whether government funded research, development and dedicated bandwidth should be devoted to V2V, or whether the country would be better served by opening that bandwidth up to enhanced wi-fi availability.  The information in the story was great, the part of the story that I could not comprehend was the images of auto accidents used as the debate was being framed. 

Any American that has traveled in a car is aware of auto accidents.  You see them on the way to work, you hear about them on television and the radio, occasionally there will be footage of an accident that reinforces how truly dangerous highway travel can be.  I don’t object to footage of highway accidents being shown in principle.  Being aware of dangers can help people to be more cautious in the hopes of avoiding those dangers.  What I do disagree with is sensational images used out of context and because they are there rather than being necessary to driving a story.

I believe that CBS used graphic footage of a gruesome traffic incident simply out of a desire to shock rather than drive a story, and in its context I strongly disagree with the images’ use without a disclaimer.  To drive home that V2V might be able to prevent traffic accidents, CBS used the image of a t-bone auto accident, at high speed, at an intersection that a pedestrian happened to be crossing.  The presenter noted that the pedestrian was “only” injured, presumably they would have had better discretion than to show the video had the unlucky pedestrian not survived.  The horrific video however, showed two large trucks rolling out-of-control through an intersection and literally obliterating a human being.  Erasing him from the video.  I am uneasy describing the story as I think back to it.  That sort of imagery is simply unnecessary to further the discussion of whether a dedicated bandwidth should be reserved by the government for V2V technology.  Not being a television producer, I really do not know what the motivation was for including disturbing video in a story that really did not concern the objectionable image.  As a television consumer, I strongly object to being exposed to such pre-planned, disturbing footage without a disclaimer before the story is presented.

Very slight research before writing this shows that the TV guidelines are a voluntary institution and have not been applied to news broadcasts, I am not sure whether this should be the case, but responsible news agencies ought to inform their viewers of the images that accompany their stories.  It’s probably not a new phenomenon, but the news these days is a parade of horribles that from an outsider’s point of view seems designed to shock and disturb.  For the most part I think viewers have come to terms with this and can conform their viewing habits if they wish to avoid stories they don’t care to consume.  I know that I do this.  I don’t care to hear about the latest shocking atrocities, crimes, and diseases.  They don’t make me feel good.  Because of that, I generally do not watch the first part of a news broadcast, or simply switch the channel when one of those topics is being broached.  The news caters to all types of viewers, some of whom presumably are interested in stories that I am not, so changing the channel is not a big deal. 

My hackles have raised this morning because of what I feel was an ambush of shocking imagery in a story that did not call for it, and in a story in which viewers should not rightly expect graphic images.  I expect to be shocked by certain news stories, and so I choose not to follow them.  In a story regarding congressional funding for V2V research and opening up wi-fi bandwidth, I do not expect to see images of a pedestrian getting horribly injured in a traffic accident.  It is pure excess on the part of the broadcaster and is unfair to the viewer. 

In stories such as that presented by CBS News this morning, something must be done to inform the viewer of the images that they can expect to accompany the news item.  Had I been forewarned going into the story that graphic imagery would have been used, I likely would have turned the channel.  It’s my right to determine what I want to see and hear in the morning as I attempt to get caught up on the news of the day.  Starting a day with seeing a pedestrian get maimed is not my idea of fun, nor is it necessary or informative for me.  Had CBS’s presenter disclaimed before the broadcast that the story included graphic images of a traffic accident, I would have changed the channel I think, or at least have been braced for what was to come.  Not being told that, I was shocked by the imagery’s inclusion, and my right to determine how I start my day was taken in a way by an unnecessarily sensational news story.

One could certainly say, ‘Get over it, it may not be the best, but it’s how we do things’, and there would not be a lot that anyone could do, but really who is served by including sensational footage in a relatively bland news story?  There is enough awfulness in the news.  It does not need to be implanted without warning in a story that does not call for it.  

Here's a link to the video from the March 26, 2015, CBS morning news broadcast that I found bothersome.  http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/wi-fi-expansion-could-threaten-v2v-safety-tech/.  Is it going overboard to think that CBS should have warned viewers of the traffic accident footage?

I'll give a quick rundown about what I'm envisioning for this blogspot.  Hopefully it will go on beyond the initial post.  

I've been between jobs for about a week now, and for me that is when the sitting around really begins to gnaw and you feel like you've got to do something slightly productive.  All of the sitting around between temporary gigs turns me into a larger consumer of news and media and presentation than I normally am, and watching and listening inevitably leads to questions for me.  Those questions are generally of a pretty small nature, and typically are fueled by comparisons.  I figured if those questions arise, and I've got the time, why not try to type out a couple of sentences on the question.  I'm going to primarily focus on media and government type things, but I don't think I'm a real partisan individual.  I'll try to be coherent and come to a logical conclusion on the question that is posed.  The first post is mostly based on feel, on other posts I may try to have it be more research based.  I may try to pose a question at the end of a piece to see what others think, but for a lot of that stuff we'll just have to take it as it goes.  

Oh, and for the name, it was available, which is a great start.  Also, I'm not trying to have this thing be super serious, it's more of something to do.  So, in that vein, one of my favorite commercials of all time is the Peter O'Toole stuffed-crust pizza advertisement for Pizza Hut.  Peter is reciting Hamlet perfectly while holding a slice of pizza, "...That is the question.  Whether it is nobler in the mind to suffer...", when the director yells cut and directs Peter to do it backward.  Peter obliges and begins "Question is that...", of course the director wanted the pizza backward, but I always really liked that line.  Also, if it doesn't last, my brother saw that the initials are QuIT, which was a pretty clever find and provides a ready excuse if I run out of ideas to post.

Thanks for reading.