Readers Write: The joy of running, football, baseball, immigration, the Electoral College

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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I was not surprised to read some of the findings of Gustavus Adolphus College researchers regarding the Strava fitness app (“Strava app good for fitness, maybe not for mental health,” Oct. 21). When I first started running regularly, I logged everything I did on Strava. Chasing new personal records and comparing myself with others certainly helped me develop speed and distance quickly. But soon I realized that quantifying my exercise was making me not enjoy it, removing the serenity and joy of a “runner’s high” in favor of chasing numbers.

Not every casual runner needs to keep strict statistics on their performance, and I believe more people would stick to running as regular exercise if they were less focused on speed and distance. These days, a $10 Casio digital watch is the only technology I bring on a run, and I’m a much happier and healthier person for it.

Nicholas Rea, Minneapolis

I agree with what Patrick Reusse writes in his columns about 99% of the time. An exception would be the one from Oct. 13: “Twins fans need to quit sniveling, start showing up.” Excuse me? When Target Field funding was being established, fans, also known as taxpayers, put $260 million into it through Hennepin County taxes. I’d call that showing up. For those keeping score, that’s nearly 60% of the $435 million cost of the ballpark. For that, the 2024 fans got a team that finished one place ahead of the Chicago White Sox, literally the worst team in baseball history. If you get a bill for $100 at a restaurant, you don’t expect to pay that for two peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. For Twins fans, I hope the new owners show up when it is time to put the team together and not cut the payroll by $30 million again.

Tom Edwards, Forest Lake

A few weeks ago, along with a brother-in-law, I had the unforgettable experience of seeing the Minnesota Vikings take on the New York Jets at Tottenham Stadium in London. As a proud Minnesotan and lifelong Vikings fan, I was blown away by the enthusiasm and passion Europeans have for NFL football and the Minnesota Vikings. I met fans from Germany, Norway, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and everywhere in between, all sporting jerseys from every team in the league. It felt like the entire NFL family had gathered under one roof, thousands of miles from home.

The atmosphere at Tottenham was electric and incredibly civil. Fans, both local and visiting, were united by their love for the game, and it was a powerful reminder of how the NFL and sports brings people together across borders. The global reach of football is something special — it’s not just a sport, it’s a universal language of excitement, competition and connection.

Could NFL football be a step toward world peace? Maybe that’s a stretch, but after seeing how it unites so many, it’s hard not to wonder. And if we threw in some pickleball matches at halftime, who knows what kind of international harmony we could create!

Skol!

John McCarthy, Eden Prairie

Wisconsin dairy farmer John Rosenow notes that 90% of his workers may be without papers (“Where Trump leads, immigrants crucial,” Oct. 20). (That’s sin papeles, for those of us who work on our Spanish.) Sometimes I ask friends my age, middle 70s or older, after they render the “organ recital” of surgeries, aches and pains, which of the following jobs they will apply for if Donald Trump gets rid of these laborers: kitchen duty, construction, picking fruit and veggies, snow removal, yard work? Maybe I can get you an application for the meatpacking industry. How about 10 hours a day carrying 50 pounds of shingles up to my roof after the next hailstorm? For some reason I never get an answer from these guys.

James Dunn, Edina

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Oh, the irony. In defending former president and current candidate Trump against accusations of his lack of intellectual fitness, a letter writer fished a single example from Trump’s encounter with the Economic Club of Chicago supposedly to illustrate his economics acumen (“You’ve got to give him some credit,” Readers Write, Oct. 23). The writer pointed out that, when the moderator asserted that deporting millions of undocumented migrants would deprive the country of essential workers, Trump gave the rationale that he wanted documented workers. Not only would that not help in the short run, because the immigration system is currently so overwhelmed it couldn’t fill the gap for years, but Trump himself, in order to benefit his campaign, demanded that his party tank the recent ready-to-be-passed bill that would have fixed that very problem. Far from absolving Trump of incompetence, it’s a shining example of it. I guess his supporters only hear what they want to hear and sane-wash him relentlessly.

Timothy R. Church, St. Paul

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In the current immigration debate, I’m shocked at how effective age-old racist tropes that “these” immigrants are more criminal and more dangerous than all those that came before, including our own parents, grandparents and ancestors (unless you are a descendant or member of an Indigenous nation). This charge has been leveled against Chinese, Irish, Italian, Jewish and many more people over the years, and both history and data have repudiated it. We know immigrants commit less crime than citizens and that they bring vitality to local economies. In Minnesota, that’s true on Lake Street in Minneapolis, in East St. Paul and in Worthington, to name a few. I also see how they bring vitality to our culture and community spirit. Shame on politicians who are using fear and division to gain votes when it is clear that crises being blamed on immigrants, such as fentanyl addiction, would not be solved even by an impermeable border wall when prescription drug companies and the internet exist. So I hope that my neighbors who are caught in the toxic political rhetoric ask themselves this: Is it more likely that our newest immigrants are so different from our own ancestors that they present a unique threat, or is it more likely that politicians remain the same … using scapegoating and fear to gain power without offering any true solutions?

Gregory Francis King, Minneapolis

The recent editorial reprinted from the New York Daily News “Dump the archaic Electoral College” (Oct. 21) suggested that candidates would visit all states if the president were elected by popular vote. Maybe once. But they would tailor their policies to voters in states with the largest populations, like California, New York, Florida and Texas. Vice President Kamala Harris, for example, would not feel the same pressure to moderate her positions to reach swing state voters like she is doing today. The delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia took many days and dozens of votes before arriving at the Electoral College. The founders foresaw a larger, more diverse country and wanted candidates to appeal to all regions, not to the most devoted and passionate voters in the most populous states. They were afraid of the partisanship that might stem from a direct popular vote where not all states were heard and not all issues discussed.

The framers of the Constitution were striving for unity above all else. They were mistrustful of the masses and perhaps worried about radical decisions by a slim, unrestrained majority, like doing away with the filibuster or stacking the Supreme Court. That the 2024 election would come down to swing states from the East Coast (Pennsylvania), the Midwest (Wisconsin and Michigan), the South (Georgia and North Carolina), the Southwest (Arizona) and the West (Nevada) would delight the founders. It is exactly by design.

Nat Robbins, Minneapolis