June 26, 2008
The NY Times goes in search of a good root beer
They get one critical aspect wrong, however. (link to article)
We tasted 25 different root beers, not from frosty mugs but in our usual wine glasses. This was a clinical environment, after all, a time for analysis and debate. Frosty mugs? We don’t need no stinkin’ frosty mugs!
Wine glasses? That shouldn't be legal. Anyway, they give 2 stars to Fitz's and 3 stars to IBC. Personally, I would argue the reverse. Stephen Karlson will be happy to know that Sprecher's garnered 3 stars.
The article also links to this rating site for root beer. (Ah, this Internet. We do indeed live in wonderful times.)
But the best root beer I've ever tasted would have to be 1919 root beer. It might be a little tough for you to find, however, as it is a draft root beer--no bottles or cans for this precious drink. The last time I had it was about a year ago at the Whiskey River Emporium in St. Peter, Minn. Southern Minnesota is about the only place I know of where restaurants serve it. It's a must when I pass through the area.
Posted by William Polley at 02:33 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
September 12, 2007
Nine-man football
The NY Times visits my old stompin' grounds (or close, anyway).
Nine-man football is the province of small towns in Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. “It’s simple,” said Nic Thompson, the Storm’s defensive back coach. “Nine-man just doesn’t have tackles.”
In Minnesota, it began in the mid-1960s after teams evolved from six- and eight-man football. Now, with 81 teams, it represents the state’s largest class. To qualify, high schools need to have fewer than 165 students. Stephen/Argyle Central has 111, 68 of whom are boys.
The article discusses how life has changed on the prairie on and off the football field. My town was not that small, and our football team had tackles. Even so, parts of the article sounded familiar. Read the article and catch a glimpse of the small town experience.
Posted by William Polley at 12:29 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 07, 2007
MnDOT camera misses bridge collapse, captures aftermath
Several days ago, I speculated on whether the MnDOT cameras recorded the 35W bridge collapse. Well, now we know. They were recording, but the closest camera was facing the other direction at the time. What you see is one last car make it across and all the opposing traffic stops. The camera operator, realizing something is wrong, pans the camera over to see that the bridge is gone.
But there is at least one other camera that could have potentially had a view of the bridge. The camera at 4th St. was not operating the morning after. It is back up now. Unless it was zoomed in, it would have a rather poor view because of the distance. Due to its orientation, it might be able to show which sections of road gave way first. In the event that it was recording and did see anything of value, I would guess that the NTSB is looking at it.
Posted by William Polley at 07:21 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 06, 2007
River traffic on the Mississippi
The US Army Corps of Engineers has a searchable database of vessel locations. Among other things, you can use it to see where a vessel has most recently locked. Aside from boats used for recreation or excursions, the only registered vessel that has most recently locked at Upper St. Anthony Falls prior to the I-35 bridge collapse was the Patrick Gannaway. That vessel was pushing 2 barges. As far as I can tell, this is the only tow that is "stranded".
Lock traffic at Lock and Dam #1 appears to have slowed. A couple tows have departed downstream, but at this time I do not find any tows above L/D #1. Three large tows have moved upstream from L/D #2 in the last day, which is encouraging.
All of this would suggest that there has been some impact, but the wider world probably won't feel it. One stranded tow and a few miles of impassible waterway is the extent of it. I'll update this periodically, every few days, until the channel opens.
Posted by William Polley at 02:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 03, 2007
Impact of bridge collapse on river traffic
The impact of the bridge collapse on river traffic should be minimal. King at SCSU Scholars has a post on the subject. According to the Mn/DOT river guide, there are only three terminals upstream from the collapse, and none of them handle grain. Most of the grain is loaded on the Minnesota River which joins the Mississippi further downstream.
The good news that I have to report today is that as of 6am, the river elevation below the Upper St. Anthony Lock (the next one up) is up over 9 feet from yesterday. The elevation above Lock and Dam #1 (the next one down) is down almost 3 feet since yesterday. This means that the river level around the collapse site should be falling enough to aid the recovery effort.
Posted by William Polley at 01:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
A very sensible lesson learned from the bridge tragedy
In a disaster situation, unless you have a critical need, don't use the phone for voice communications. Use text-messaging instead. Text-messages use much less of the system's resources than voice. Think of it by this analogy, e-mail uses only a tiny amount of internet bandwidth while a VoIP phone call uses much more.
I see a great public service campaign here.
Some comments on the article above ask why the cell phone companies don't build enough capacity for emergencies? That's easy. That would leave a lot of unused capacity 99.9% of the time (or more). By the same token, hotels in a college town often don't have the capacity to house everyone for dates like graduation and homecoming. Of course, when you're looking for a hotel, you can stay in the next town over. That doesn't apply in the cell phone case. But that's a difference on the demand side. The supply decision is that of building a fixed capacity based on fluctuating demand. There is a large literature on this, by the way.
The next question goes something like this. If text-messages take up so few resources, why do the cell phone companies charge so much for them? That's easy too. Price is not determined solely by supply, but by supply and demand. Apparently people think it's worth it.
So then what about the criticism that the cell phone companies shouldn't have to tell people to use the marginally more costly text-message in an emergency. That smacks of profiteering off of a disaster. That's easy too. (Do you see a pattern here?) Any cell phone provider that wants to enhance its goodwill with the community should say that in a time of disaster (defined as an incident that forces them to bring in portable towers to meet the demand in a specific geographic area and/or activate their own disaster plans) any text-messages will be free for a certain amount of time. I think it is within their capability to do that. I don't know think regulation is necessary to force that. Some amount of moral suasion might work.
Comments? Other ideas?
Posted by William Polley at 02:01 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
August 02, 2007
Welcome new readers
Traffic is double an average day with first time visitors making the difference. That's due to search engine traffic from merely mentioning the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. I'm sorry you found the blog under such circumstances. Minnesota is 2nd on the list of states accounting for the most hits on the blog today. If you are from Minnesota, be assured that I am thinking of my home state tonight. I have quite a number of old friends, acquaintances, college classmates, etc. in the Twin Cities, some I haven't seen in years. The chances are slim, but still...
In the coming days there will be all kinds of ideas about what should be done to fix the nation's ailing infrastructure. Andrew Samwick has a very reasoned commentary today as well as a pointer to this James Joyner piece. I'll have more to say on this later.
In the meantime, I welcome anyone who is stumbling on this blog for the first time today, especially those from Minnesota. Be sure to come back under happier circumstances.
Posted by William Polley at 06:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Internet response to bridge collapse
After reading this Wired story, I decided to check out the Flickr stream devoted to the 35W bridge collapse. One of the better photos is this one which shows people gathering on the Stone Arch Bridge to look across at the collapsed bridge. Just a month ago we were down on the banks of the Mississippi at that very spot remarking about how beautiful it was with all the bridges. There are about 7 bridges in sight from that point between 10th Avenue and Hennepin Avenue.
By the way, what they have been saying about the current in the Mississippi at that point is true. It is visibly swift. There is a working hydroelectric plant in the vicinity. The park was a nice place to take some family pictures. This is the only one I took that doesn't have people in it. This is NOT the bridge that collapsed, a fact which is fairly obvious to anyone familiar with the situation. This is the 3rd Ave./Central Ave. bridge with the Hennepin Ave. bridge just visible behind it.
If you were to pan left (downstream) from that spot, you'd be looking toward the 35W bridge. My recollection is a little hazy as to how good a view you'd have. From where you stand on the bank there, I think part of the bridge would be obscured by the trees at Pillsbury Park and Father Hennepin Park. You could see it better a few blocks further downstream. But in any case, I thought I'd put up the picture to give people here a sense of place. It's a beautiful area, and I highly recommend going down there under normal circumstances.
Posted by William Polley at 04:04 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Minneapolis bridge collapse (cont.)
By now, you have probably seen the video of the bridge collapse. That video is a security cam for the Lower St. Anthony Lock and Dam. If you're wondering about the orientation of that shot, the camera is on the west bank on the upstream side of the bridge looking north. I should also point out that MNDoT has traffic cameras all over that interstate. Here is a view of the bridge from the MNDoT camera at Washington St., the closest camera to what is now just a gaping hole. The next two cameras northbound are not functioning. Whether those cameras were located on the bridge, I do not know, but a north-facing camera trained on the 4th St. interchange would just about have to be on the bridge. What I can say is that seeing all the camera images of 35W with no cars from 280 to downtown is surreal to anyone who has traveled that area.
I have not heard anyone mention the MNDoT cameras yet in the news media. One would presume that they would be recorded, but I don't know. Minnesota has one of the more advanced traffic monitoring networks around. If there is a recording, I hope it would shed some light on what happened.
There is going to be a lot of talk about spending money to upgrade the country's infrastructure. In the press conference today, Senator Klobuchar remarked that "in America bridges just shouldn't collapse." (I may not have the quote exact, but I haven't seen a transcript yet.) But they do. It's just that they are usually smaller bridges with fewer deaths and injuries. And as with any situation that involves risk--and bridge building certainly involves risk--one has to weigh whether the risks are acceptable. 100% safety is not feasible. The task now is to determine why this happened so as to prevent it from happening again. Bridges with similar safety risks will need to be re-evaluated to see if they are on the verge of collapse.
There is a tendency to run from one emergency to the next and call for change. The fact is that bridge collapses of this type are extremely rare. It has been almost a quarter of a century since a bridge of this magnitude has collapsed for an unexplained reason (i.e. not because of earthquake or collision). If we continue on the same course, the next one could be twenty years from now or it could be tomorrow. Such is the nature of these events. But there is no question that many bridges that carry a lot of traffic are aging--and showing signs of age. State and local officials across the country need to make sure that there is a formal plan in place to prioritize bridge repair and replacement that is based on risk (i.e. the probability of a collapse) and value (i.e. the loss to the infrastructure if the bridge fails). 35W would have rated high in terms of value. The economic loss in terms of rerouted traffic is hard to calculate, but very great.
As a final observation, I would just point out that it is obvious that many of the cable news anchors who have presided over the coverage of this disaster are woefully unprepared for this sort of event. Many of them seem to lack the sort of general education necessary to understand what they are seeing. For example, one anchor was unsure whether what came up from the water when the bridge fell into the river was smoke or water. She seemed convinced it was smoke. Granted, smoke was present after the collapse, but what you see in the video is water. Here's a helpful hint. Smoke rises and lingers. Water splashes back down where it came from. There were plenty of other examples from last night too numerous to mention.
There should be a class for news anchors on dealing with disasters.
Posted by William Polley at 11:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Minneapolis bridge collapse
I love Minneapolis. I've never lived there, but have driven through the metro area many times and stopped in almost as many. I've been there twice this year, including just a month ago. Though I'm not from "The Cities" as we call them, I am always a Minnesotan, wherever I live.
And though I didn't want to watch the coverage of the I-35W collapse tonight, I could hardly turn away. I've been in that area of the city a few times. I can only recall a couple of occasions in which I have driven over the bridge (because I seldom need to go to the northern suburbs), but I'm very familiar with the area. In fact, on our visit last month, we drove by it on 4th St.--glancing to the left not knowing that I was seeing it for the last time. The riverfront area has a number of noteworthy bridges, and part of our trip to The Cities was to experience the riverfront. My wife and kids and I went down to St. Anthony Main, saw the falls, the Stone Arch Bridge, and the Pillsbury "A" Mill. The kids loved Pillsbury Park. Those attractions are just upstream from 35W, and visible from the bridge, just out of the field of view of the helicopter shots you've been watching. The lock at Lower St. Anthony Falls is just upstream of the bridge and has been in many of the shots.
My mind kept going back to all my experiences in Minneapolis and St. Paul, and I found myself wishing I could be there tonight--to pitch in somehow--even though there would be nothing to do. It was very nice to hear all the stories of the people who helped others off the bridge in those chaotic first few minutes. How glad we all were to hear that the children on the school bus all made it out ok.
The bridge is a major arterial for commuters coming into Minneapolis from the northern suburbs. Traffic won't return to normal until they rebuild the bridge, which could take a couple of years. But they will recover.
Here's the story from the PioneerPress. For blog reaction, see SCSU Scholars, Captains Quarters, and the Buzz.
Our thoughts and prayers are with the people whose lives were forever changed by today's tragedy.
To donate to the Twin Cities Red Cross, you may go to http://redcrosstc.org/donate.cfm.
Posted by William Polley at 12:46 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 13, 2007
Don Herbert, Mr. Wizard: 1917-2007
From the NY Times,
Don Herbert, who unlocked the wonders of science for youngsters of the 1950s and ’60s as television’s Mr. Wizard, died yesterday at his home in the Bell Canyon section of Los Angeles. He was 89.
The cause was bone cancer, his son-in-law Tom Nikosey told The Associated Press in confirming the death.
Mr. Herbert held no advanced degree in science, he used household items in his TV lab, and his assistants were boys and girls. But he became an influential showman-science teacher on his half-hour “Watch Mr. Wizard” programs, which ran on NBC from 1951 to 1965.
And the LA Times recounts this story. (Hat tip to Betsy's Page for the article.)
Not every Mr. Wizard experiment went according to plan.
In "Saturday Morning TV," a 1981 book by Gary H. Grossman, Herbert recalled pouring two colorless solutions into one glass and then announced that the solution would turn black before he counted to nine.
"I got up to 20 and decided I'd better stop," he recalled. "I explained that apparently other factors like temperature and acidity had interfered with the experiment."
But as he finished his explanation, the liquid changed color.
"It was embarrassing, certainly, but I discovered the answer," he said. "We hadn't used a fresh solution, so the reaction was slower than expected."
I am not old enough to remember the original NBC series, but I have seen some of those episodes shown on The Science Channel. By the time he revived the concept for the Nickelodeon network in the 1980s, I was a little older than his target demographic, but I still was fascinated by it. I remember thinking, "Why isn't there more stuff like this on TV?" Today we have The Science Channel, Bill Nye, and of course, the Mythbusters; but Mr. Wizard started it all and no one has done it quite like he did.
And he did it with class. No big budget effects. No gimmicks. You could try it at home.
A lot of us did. Thanks, Mr. Wizard.
The official Mr. Wizard website.
UPDATE: Wired News interviewed Herbert last month. It doesn't surprise me at all that he liked the Science Channel too.
WN: Are there any current science shows that you find particularly educational or entertaining?
Herbert: The Discovery Science Channel.
WN: Do you think that you were an inspiration for the science programming that has become very popular on the Discovery Channel?
Herbert: Maybe.
Go read the rest of the interview.
Posted by William Polley at 11:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 10, 2006
Weekend remembrances
Thirty-one years ago this evening, the Edmund Fitzgerald and her crew of 29 was lost to the depths of Lake Superior. The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum will have a memorial service, but unlike last year, there is no sign that it will be broadcast on the web. See my posts from the last two years.
Tomorrow, we observe Veterans Day. Originally called Armistice Day, the holiday was to commemorate the signing of the armistice at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Today, we honor all who have served.
Today, the clouds are rolling fast overhead as a strong north wind makes the rain seem all the more miserable. Ugly as it is, it is nothing compared to what Lake Superior would have felt like on this night in 1975. In that cold wind and rain this afternoon, a university flag across the street flies at half-staff in honor of another Illinois son.
And so it goes, in the present we see reflections of the past. And we remember.
Posted by William Polley at 03:59 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
August 31, 2006
Prosperity on the plains? Ya sure, you betcha!
[This started out being a single topic post, but it presented an opportunity to weave together a number of things that have come up in the news lately and have been on my mind. There is a common theme.]
Joel Kotkin looks toward my old stompin' grounds and likes what he sees. (Wall St. Journal)
Fargo-Moorhead, the pair of cities straddling the Red River (the boundary between North Dakota and Minnesota), is a thriving metropolis of slightly less than 200,000 that grew by over 20% between 1990 and 2000 and has added an additional 4,300 people over the past five years. One in five newcomers was an immigrant. Bismarck has seen a similar surge in population, growing by 3% over the past five years.
...
...According to the National Science Foundation, North Dakota ranks No. 2 in academic R&D dollars per $1,000 of gross state product, right behind Maryland and right ahead of Massachusetts. It ranks fourth in technology companies as a percentage of all business startups.
...
If the energy and technology booms bring more high-end workers to Bismarck, the broader labor shortages are driving up salaries, on average some 15% across the board between 2002 and 2005. This movement is even helping those workers who have historically had the lowest salaries. Bismark's McDonald's restaurants now start pay at upwards of $8 an hour, with some stores offering "signing bonuses" of between $100 and $150 to work under yellow arches.
Yes, opportunities abound, and the quality of life is good too. According to Bizjournals.com, the west and midwestern plains states are pretty good places to live and do business. In a survey of 577 "micropolitan" areas, the west and midwest were well represented. Bozeman, MT came in first. Minnesota has 7 in the top 50. Phil Miller will be pleased to know that Mankato came in 16th. David Tufte's home of Cedar City, UT was 48th. Here in Macomb, IL we made the top hundred (94th) which puts us in roughly the top 16%. Macomb narrowly misses the top 10 (11th) in percentage of residents with graduate degrees. Make no mistake--big university in a small town rockets a place to the top of a list like this. There is a lot to be said for living in a small town with a big (or medium sized) university. We have access to performing arts... a jazz festival that rivals those in much larger cities is coming up in a couple weeks. In October, the touring production of RENT comes to town. We have libraries, broadband access, and Division I athletics to entertain us. Not bad for a city of 20,000. By the way, micropolitan areas are defined as follows:
Micropolitan areas are smaller than metropolitan areas. Each micropolitan area consists of a county or cluster of counties that are economically dependent on a central city, town or village with 10,000 to 50,000 residents. The U.S. Office of Management and Budget has classified 577 micropolitan areas across America. Statistics in this study cover all portions of micropolitan areas, not just their central communities.
With such a good quality of life in places like Fargo, Iowa City, and Macomb a person can follow his or her vocatio and be very happy, very unlike the "Great Gatsby." As it happens, Robert Frank discusses happiness in today's NY Times,
Gatsby’s unhappiness may also be explained in part by the finding that those who focus most consciously and intensely on material success also tend to experience low levels of measured happiness. This is a singularly important finding for the many incoming freshmen whose only apparent goal is to become fabulously wealthy by age 25.
A far more promising strategy, according to the happiness literature, is to seek work you love. Those who find such a calling typically become deeply engaged in their professional lives. And engagement, in turn, leads to expertise, which in some fields, at least, leads to wealth. Finding work that you value for its own sake is thus not only a promising path to happiness, it may also increase your chances of becoming rich. But even if not, it will improve your odds of becoming an interesting person, someone who is attractive to both friends and potential mates alike.
One can follow that strategy anywhere if you really want to, even in places like Fargo, Iowa City, and Macomb. Furthermore, with the internet and modern supply chain management, we in the smaller metro areas (and micropolitan areas) can partake of the conveniences of modern life that make us wealthier just the same as folks from the coasts. That would not have been the case in the 1920s or even the 1960s. The fact that I can communicate these thoughts with you, my readers from New York to Australia, from the hamlet of Macomb, IL is itself an indication that we live in amazing times. It's difficult to measure it, but it makes me happy. And I count it as wealth.
Don't get me wrong. The picture is not entirely rosy. This is not a Panglossian "best of all possible worlds". But neither is the bottom falling out. When McDonalds is paying $8/hr (something that I last saw in Iowa City in about 1999 at the peak of the dot-com boom), that's something you can't ignore.
Posted by William Polley at 12:54 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 01, 2006
Immigration and my hometown
Minnesota Public Radio visited my hometown this week. You can read about it and listen to the audio clips on their website. Here's a link to the first article in the series. Click around for the rest of the articles and the audio.
Pelican Rapids is a small town. The population is about 2300. But when I was growing up the population was about 1900. With small towns dying all around, how did this little burg grow?
One word. Immigration.
When I was in about 4th grade, we started to receive immigrants (in that less politically correct time we called them "refugees")--many of them school age children--from southeast Asia. This was in the early '80s when the fall of Saigon was about as fresh in people's minds as 9/11 is today. Before long, most of our elementary and high school classrooms had at least one student from that war-torn region. And for the most part, we got along just fine. They learned English very quickly (by high school, some of them were my teammates on the speech team, math team, etc.). They did all the things normal small town school kids do. It wasn't until about the time that I graduated high school that I realized that our town was different from other small towns. Something unique had started, and as I left for college, it kicked into overdrive.
As the Vietnam era faded into memory, new conflicts arose in the world, and that meant new enthicities in Pelican Rapids. Bosnians, Somalis, and Sudanese began to arrive--just to name a few. Of course there were bound to be some rough spots. With so many languages, cultures, and customs, misunderstandings are inevitable. But by all accounts, it has been a success story. This June, the town will celebrate its 9th annual International Friendship Festival--complete with a citizenship ceremony.
I should point out that one of the things that makes Pelican Rapids (and other towns in Minnesota like it) attractive to immigrants is the turkey processing plant. They can get jobs there. Along with people who have been displaced by war from far flung corners of the globe, there are likely a few who rode up from Mexico hidden in the back of a van. That's what makes the immigration issue difficult. A boy who lost his parents in Sudan has our sympathy, but a man sending money back to his family in Mexico doesn't. At least that is how it comes out in the national debate. But from an economist's point of view, stripping away some of the legal issues that decide arbitrarily how many people get to cross which border, the distinction is harder to see.
When I lived in Pelican Rapids, I didn't hear anyone complain about immigrants--refugees or otherwise--taking jobs from the locals at the turkey plant. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but it's a small town. You'd think I'd have heard something. The people who worked at the turkey plant 30 or more years ago were mostly locals. Many of them were only a couple of generations removed from Scandinavian immigrants themselves. It was an alternative to farming and required little education. Unlike some of the big corporate meat packing plants subject to the NIMBY phenomenon today, this operation was a cooperative built by the local turkey farmers. But as the older generation retired and my generation went to college, they did need to find a new source of labor. That new source arrived just in time. Today, the members of my generation who remain in Pelican Rapids are far more likely to make their living serving a new group of immigrants than working in the turkey plant themselves. One such person was my neighbor back in the '70s. She was interviewed in the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Fedgazette in 2004.
For her part, Pam Westby of the Multicultural Learning Center in Pelican Rapids takes a multigenerational view of the costs incurred by immigrant patrons. “My great grandfather came here as a Norwegian immigrant,” she said. “He had access to a Norwegian newspaper through the county, just as I'm trying to provide Somali newspapers on the computers for our Somali immigrants. For me it's giving back ... immigration is part of who we are, and this is just another point on the timeline.”
Yes, there are social costs. It costs money to run the library (a.k.a. Multicultural Learning Center). Social services get stretched a little thinner these days. But as the MPR story points out, there are some budding entrepreneurs in this new group of immigrants. They tell the story of a Somali immigrant, Abdi Abdi, who first got a job at the turkey plant, but then opened up a Halal meat shop where the meat is butchered according to Islamic law. Sounds like the same entrepreneurial spirit that has been a hallmark of this country since the beginning. How many little mom-and-pop shops in New York, LA, or San Francisco can trace their history to the entrepreneurialism of an immigrant perhaps a century or more (or less) ago? One can only guess. To suggest that our country isn't capable of reproducing such results in the 21st century is an insult to Mr. Abdi and others like him. And so I believe that in economic language, immigration has brought a Pareto improvement to Pelican Rapids. The immigrants have jobs that are better than they had in their home country. The people of my generation and my parents' generation are providing them with services. And the services they are providing are much more than what my ancestors had at their disposal when they tried to squeeze a living out of a hard new land. My hometown could have died a slow death, but now has a new lease on life thanks to immigration.
For more on the global community of Pelican Rapids, check out the 56572 blog (that's the ZIP code, in case you couldn't guess). The blogger there used to be my school bus driver, and over the years he has been absolutely tireless in his efforts to help new immigrants in town. You can read more about how it all got started here.
And lest anyone get the wrong idea, I'm not trying to generalize too much here. I'm not going to be Pollyanaish and suggest that if only we could all be like Pelican Rapids, we would not have this current furor over immigration. The way they did it worked for them but might not work everywhere. This is, in some ways, a personal story. It's a blog post, not a journal article. I do, however, hope that it gives you some food for thought. Being from that town has shaped who I am and has given me a lot to think about over the years.
Posted by William Polley at 12:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
March 06, 2006
Kirby Puckett, Baseball great, 1960-2006
I don't think I will ever forget the sound of the Metrodome announcer (Bob Casey, who passed away almost a year ago) calling out his name, "Kiiiiirrrrbyyyyy Puckett!" If the Twins were in need of a hit, there were few things that sounded sweeter. Perhaps the only sweeter sound was radio announcer John Gordon saying, "Touch 'em all, Kirby Puckett!" after a home run.
My Dad became a Twins fan in the days of Tony Oliva and Harmon Killebrew. I never saw them play. But we shared Kirby.
Puckett was short, stocky, and played for a small market team. Looking at him in the outfield, you wouldn't suspect him of being able to make leaping catches at the wall the way he did. But inside that 5'8" package was one of the hardest working players around. He made it look easy. Talent and hard work made him a great player. But what made him beloved by Twins fans was that he played the game like he really enjoyed it. How could you not smile when you saw him grinning from ear-to-ear? When Kirby stepped to the plate, anything was possible. He made it exciting. He made it fun to be a fan.
History will remember his game ending home run in game 6 of the 1991 World Series. Minnesota will remember seeing #34 mature over the years into an integral part of a team that would win it all--twice. I will remember all of that and so much more. So much more because Kirby Puckett and the Twins were always on AM radio and cable TV in our house (and car) on those warm summer nights and cool autumn evenings. It was as if he provided the background music for the memories of my teenage and college years. Thanks, Kirby. Touch 'em all.
Kirby Puckett's Hall of Fame Page
King (SCSU Scholars) has a eulogy here.
Posted by William Polley at 11:53 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
September 10, 2005
The NY Times travel section visits my old stomping grounds
They did not visit 56572. They did, however, visit Alexandria and the Kensington Runestone Museum. They also visited Winona and Wadena. Of course, since the trip was inspired by a story in Bob Dylan's memoirs, it was natural that they visit Rollingstone, population 697.
Read all about it here. Of course, like many travel columns it fails to capture much of the real essense of the place. And it seems like they were so obsessed with following the path that Dylan is said to have told Bono to follow if he really wanted to see the "birthplace of America" that they missed out on some of the more interesting things Minnesota has to offer.
For what it's worth, the conversation they report overhearing in the Wadena Inn & Grill is entirely plausible.
Posted by William Polley at 11:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 22, 2005
25th anniversary of the "Miracle on Ice"
25 years ago today, a bunch of kids mostly from Minnesota and Massachussetts up-ended the world of Olympic hockey and became a piece of American history. Read here.
Posted by William Polley at 04:29 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 15, 2005
On the subject of Sinclair Lewis
As long as we're on the subject of Minnesota, progressives, small towns, Sinclair Lewis, and so on, here are a couple of pictures I took a couple years ago on a trip through Sauk Centre to see the Lewis house. The first is his house itself, which is open for tours.
And here is the movie theatre with an entirely appropriate name.
Posted by William Polley at 12:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Think-Off
It's time once again for the Great American Think-Off in New York Mills, Minnesota. You can submit your essays directly through their website. How do I know about this? New York Mills is just a few miles from my old hometown of Pelican Rapids. They started the Think-Off back in the early '90s when I was in college. I've followed it over the years, but never entered it myself. Maybe I will this year as the topic is an economic one: Which is better for society, Competition or Cooperation?
Whether you enter or not, I really want you to check it out. Here's a town of 1000 that gets its essay competition noticed by C-Span. They've got moxie up there on the prairie.
Also check out their Cultural Center at this site.
The cultural center, the Think-Off, the focus on the arts, and a progressive attitude makes me think of one of my favorite novels, Main Street by Sinclair Lewis. Lewis lived in Sauk Centre, Minnesota for a while, and the fictional town of Gopher Prairie bears a lot of resemblance to Sauk Centre, New York Mills, or a hundred other towns I grew up knowing and loving. The protagonist of the novel, Carol, tried to bring culture to Gopher Prairie. Carol would have liked New York Mills. And for all their efforts, I love New York Mills too.
Posted by William Polley at 12:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 21, 2004
Hometown news
It's not every day that your hometown is featured in a Federal Reserve publication. Read about the influx of new immigrants into Pelican Rapids, MN and a number of other 9th district towns and cities.
Posted by William Polley at 11:54 PM | Comments (0)