Minnesota Prairie Roots

Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

We don’t “need” new stadiums February 2, 2011

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 10:04 PM
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I’VE ABOUT HAD IT with Minnesota sports teams thinking taxpayers should help them finance construction of new stadiums.

First the University of Minnesota got their new TCF Stadium. Then the Twins got Target Field.

And, as we know, the Minnesota Vikings have been pushing for a new stadium for years.

The St. Paul Saints have now hopped on the gotta-have-a-new-stadium bandwagon and are proposing a $45 million facility in downtown St. Paul, subsidized, of course, by taxpayer dollars.

Over at Target Center in Minneapolis, a proposal is now on the table to make $150 million in renovations to that building, home to the Timberwolves.

Come on, team owners, athletes, government officials, lobbyists, etc., have you heard of budget shortfalls, the bad economy, unemployment, struggling to make ends meet, high healthcare costs, high gas prices, high food prices, etc.?

I have no time, none, to listen to your list of so-called “needs.” You might “want” a new stadium, but in these difficult economic times, when the average Minnesotan is struggling, you don’t “need” a new stadium.

Here are some real needs:

  • Jobs (and pu….lease don’t tell me stadium projects will create new jobs; those are temporary)
  • Affordable healthcare
  • A decent wage for those who work long, hard hours to provide for themselves and their families (no multi-million dollar contracts here)
  • Lower gas prices
  • Better highways in outstate Minnesota (ever drive Minnesota Highway 3 between Faribault and Northfield or U.S. Highway 14 between Mankato and New Ulm?)

Readers, what’s your opinion on the whole gotta-have-a-new-stadium issue? Choose to agree or disagree with me, but you better have a really, really good reason for supporting a new stadium if that’s your stance.

© Copyright 2011 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Sports at what cost December 15, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 8:43 AM
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I’VE NEVER BEEN ATHLETIC. When elementary school classmates picked teams for Red Rover or softball, I was among the last chosen. Who would want a skinny girl with toothpick arms trying to hold the line against brawny boys becoming men or strong farm boys who could slug the ball into the outfield?

I wouldn’t have chosen me either. Even though I could scoop silage and ground feed, carry milk pails and toss hay bales nearly as well as my brothers, I possessed no athletic prowess. And, frankly, I didn’t care, although it did hurt sometimes to always be the last team member chosen.

I needed to care about sports only enough to pass physical education classes. I remember one junior high school p.e. teacher who expected everyone in the class to excel in gymnastics, just like the pencil-thin, all-legs-and-arms girl who could bend like Gumby. Needless to say, I got a “C” in that class. Thankfully today’s gym teachers seem to have changed their expectations and grading tactics, realizing that not every student is a naturally-gifted athlete.

But too many parents think their kids are the next Brett Favre, Joe Mauer or whoever else is considered a sports star. (Those are the only two names I could come up with off the top of my head since I don’t follow professional sports.)

Anyway, in my opinion, too many parents have become obsessed with athletics, pushing their little Jimmy or Janie into multiple sports that continue non-stop year-round. When, exactly, do kids have time to relax and just be kids? How can they learn to use free time, to entertain themselves, if their lives are always scheduled with this practice and that practice and this game and that game?

Now, before I raise the ire of coaches, parents and student athletes, let me clarify that student athletics have value. Kids learn to work hard. They learn team work and self-discipline. They learn to set and achieve goals. And they get a good work out. Sports can also be entertaining.

The problem arises, in my opinion, when sports overtake family life and everything evolves around practices and games. This time of year I am especially troubled by the scheduling of practices and tournaments during holiday breaks. When student athletes should be celebrating with their families or simply enjoying some down time, they are running to practices and games and tournaments.

I remember a friend once telling me about her son’s soccer game scheduled on a week night in Marshall, a three-hour, one-way, drive from Faribault. Now tell me that makes sense. None of the moms wanted to go and I can’t blame them given their sons were only middle-schoolers. That’s just one example of how ridiculous this traveling sports competition has gotten.

I wonder, too, how families can afford, weekend after weekend, to travel out of town for tournaments, shelling out money for gas, fast food, admission tickets and hotel rooms. How do they work those multi-hundred dollar weekends into their family budgets and is it worth the money spent? Maybe. Maybe not.

Sunday practices and games for student athletes also bother me. A lot. I’ve often wondered why parents don’t simply revolt against coaches and organizers (or whomever) that schedule these Sunday activities.

Are sports so important at the elementary and high school level that families have to give up their Sundays?

NOW IN CASE YOU’RE WONDERING what prompted this spiel, I will tell you: Brett Favre and the collapse of the Mall of America Field roof.

I really do not care about Favre or whether he played in Monday’s  Minnesota Vikings’ game. But the amount of news coverage earlier this week made me think I should care. Honestly, why?

As for the dome collapse, I dislike how some are now using this incident to say, “We need a new stadium.” Well, this taxpayer does not want to pay for a new Vikings stadium. Let the Vikings, with their highly-paid football players, pay for their own stadium.

But, hey, you know, this society seems obsessed with sports…

I’m sure many will disagree with the opinions I’ve expressed here. But I’m certain many of you out there will agree. What’s your take on sports at the elementary and high school level and how athletics impact families? And, what’s your opinion on a new stadium? Sorry, I’m not asking your opinion on Favre, but if you want to offer one, go ahead.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

Cheese, cheeseheads and football November 22, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 12:30 PM
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A glimpse of shoppers walking along Pearl Street in La Crosse, Wisc., as seen from inside Cheddarheads, a cow/cheesehead crazy gift shop.

I WENT TO THE GROCERY store Sunday to purchase some last minute food for Thanksgiving dinner, including cheese for pre-meal snacking. My extended family prefers to extend their stomachs before indulging in a turkey dinner with trimmings.

Because they are an adventuresome bunch, I grabbed mango and tomato basil cheeses from Henning’s Wisconsin Cheese and Eden Vale’s black peppercorn smoked Gouda and cranberry white cheddar.

My husband questioned some of my selections, but I didn’t waver except for also choosing the “Best of class 2007” Colby from Henning’s. My family is not the safe American, Velveeta, plain old cheddar type of cheese-eaters. We prefer jazzed-up cheeses.

I’m also serving St. Pete’s Select blue cheese from Faribault Dairy Company, a subsidiary of Swiss Valley Farms. My husband and I, and two of my dinner-guest brothers, love that creamy, premium blue cheese, aged in the sandstone caves of my community.

All of this cheese writing this morning reminds me of my second eldest, who is currently traveling through Wisconsin on her way to find an apartment. She just landed a job in the Appleton area.

We’ve been teasing her about living in Wisconsin and becoming a cheese connoisseur, although I don’t know why given she attended college in La Crosse.

I suggested that she carry a cheese cutter lest Wisconsin officials stop her at the border. We even discussed whether the door into her apartment will unlock via a cheese cutter rather than a key.

Oh, yes, we’re a silly bunch, aren’t we?

My family has nothing against Wisconsin; we kind of like that state and Wisconsin cheese.

But don’t expect my daughter to become a cheesehead. She’s been asked several times whether she will now become a Green Bay Packers fan. The answer is a resounding “NO!” Like me, she is not a sports person. But, if she was, I suppose she might consider switching her allegiance from the Vikings to the Packers.

I’ve heard, and my daughter has probably heard too, that the Vikings aren’t doing very well this season. Is that true? Like I said, we could care less about sports…

Maybe my daughter should have purchased one of these cheesehead hats from Cheddarheads in downtown La Crosse. They were showcased in an old bathtub painted like a Holstein when I was there in May.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

 

The football-playing gnomes of New Ulm August 31, 2010

Filed under: Uncategorized — Audrey Kletscher Helbling @ 7:12 AM
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Gnomes line a section of boulevard along S. Broadway Street in New Ulm.

IF YOU’RE ZIPPING along Broadway Street in New Ulm, you might not notice the gnomes strategically lining a stretch of boulevard turf between South Sixth and Seventh Streets. Or if you do spot them, you might wonder, “What the heck was that?” And you’d likely keep right on driving.

But not me. I stopped to check out the gnomes on a recent visit to this German city that seems overrun with these curious little legendary elfins that supposedly live in the depths of the earth and hoard treasures.

The Broadway gnomes aren’t your ordinary gnomes, although at least half of them appear to be treasure-hoarders. More on that later.

Rather, these elfins comprise two football teams—the Minnesota Vikings and their archrival, The Green Bay Packers.

The Minnesota Vikings and The Green Bay Packers play football on a stretch of artificial turf along Broadway.

The creator of this curious football game has distinguished the teams by draping gnomes in purple capes and in green and gold capes. The Vikings sport homemade “helmets” that are more blue hats with tacked on horns than purple helmets. And The Packers appear to be wearing sponges, AKA protective cheese slices, atop their helmet-less heads.

But, hey, I give this sports artist an “A” for creating an original and durable work of roadside art.

This isn’t exactly the safest place to play football, though, I quickly learn as I crouched to take photos just feet away from the heavy traffic. One topple or misstep and I’d find myself sidelined with an injury, or worse.

I see a few tackled, injured, or maybe just wind-blown, Packers lying on the turf. A medic is even carting one off the field. I wonder if, occasionally, a Wisconsinite walks by and covertly knocks over a Vikings gnome. Come to think of it, I didn’t check to see if the football players are secured in place.

An injured Green Bay Packers gnome is carted off the field.

But of one fact I’m certain, these green-and-yellow outfitted football-playing gnomes remain true to their hoarding nature. They’re guarding their treasure, keeping the Vince Lombardi trophy away from the Scandinavian gnomes in this German city.

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AT THE END of the football field, I discovered this sign: “To mow or not to mow, that is the question. Whats the answer?”

A homeowner makes a statement along a New Ulm boulevard.

Is the sign designer making a literal statement about mowing grass here? (I wouldn’t feel safe mowing this close-to-the-busy-busy-roadway boulevard.)

Or is the writer making a statement about the need for a new open-air football stadium with real grass versus artificial turf?

#

THEN, COINCIDENTALLY (or not), just around the corner from the Broadway football field, I spied this (team?) bus.

The Schell's beer bus was parked near Broadway Stadium.

© Copyright 2010 Audrey Kletscher Helbling