Readers Write: The Vikings, energy production

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

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The Minnesota Vikings have started the 2024 season 3-0, an excellent beginning and one that was somewhat unexpected. Predictions for the team were in the “meh” to “dreadful” range, and these first few games have been a very pleasant surprise to Vikings fans.

A lot of people are offering up a lot of reasons for the fast start: a new quarterback, a new running back, a new old guy in the secondary, a new kicker. These are all likely and plausible explanations, but the fact of the matter is, the Vikings are winning because of one thing, and one thing only:

Me.

Yes, I am solely responsible for the Vikings’ impressive start. Normally, I’m not one to brag or take credit that belongs to someone else. But in this case I feel justified and compelled to share with the world the exceptional work I’ve been doing.

Most fans have rituals for game day. They wear a lucky jersey, or eat nothing but potato salad in the first quarter, or stand on their head before a field-goal attempt. They truly believe they can influence the outcome of events with such nonsense, and while I empathize, I know they’re sadly deluded.

Here’s the truth: The Vikings win when I stop watching.

I only made this life-changing discovery this year. If I’m home when the game is on, I can watch the first three quarters. The universe is fine with that. I can even watch the fourth quarter if the Vikings are ahead by a lot and in no danger of losing the lead. But woe betide them if I watch the entire game. They will not win if I do, and it’s that simple.

I wish I’d learned this years ago — I could have saved myself and so many others a lot of pain.

I’ve been a fan since they arrived in Minnesota, rooting my little five-year-old heart out, thrilling to the exploits of Carl Eller, Alan Page, Fran Tarkenton and Paul Krause. But too many disappointments, too many moments of sitting in stunned disbelief as another certain victory slipped ignominiously away, have turned me from a true believer to a cautious, wary follower. Still a fan, but now, as they say, my heart is a secret garden and the walls are very high.

But now I know. I finally understand my role in the hometown eleven’s fortunes. If I don’t watch the entire game (actually, if last week is any indication, if I don’t watch at all) they will win. I feel so much better knowing that, and I plan to use my power for good, to help the five-year-olds of today live full and happy lives, free of the heartbreak so many of us have lived with for so long.

I’ll miss watching, of course. But if it will help Vikings Nation thrive, I’m willing to take one for the team. That’s just the kind of guy I am.

Peter Moore, St. Paul

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This past Sunday, I saw the Vikings play the Texans and saw a team that I recognized, in its throwback uniforms. I’d like to appeal to management and to fans who agree: Please make the throwbacks the Vikings’ primary uniforms!

Also, bring back the traditional road look, with UCLA-style jersey stripes and the same pants the Vikings wore against the Texans.

I’ve been a fan from afar since 1973, and Vikings football at its best is a whole aesthetic. Playing home games in the elements was a big part of that aesthetic, and it pained me to see the team move indoors in 1982. My favorite moment of the team’s current incarnation was seeing Bud Grant do the coin toss for the playoff game against Seattle, in a polo shirt and in Viking weather in the team’s then-temporary home at the University of Minnesota.

It brought a tear to my eye.

I understand there were reasons why a retractable roof was impractical for U.S. Bank Stadium. Apparently there will not be home games in the elements again in my lifetime, and we’ll have to suffer the irony of seeing the Minnesota Vikings, of all teams, having to simulate winter-weather home games with “whiteouts” and another unrecognizable uniform for the occasion.

Can those of us who appreciate the whole aesthetic that is, and should always be, Vikings football, please, please have the uniforms? Can we please have something that makes the team on TV, or on highlight reels, or in pictures, look like the team we know?

As much as it pained me to see the Vikings move indoors in 1982, it hurt to see the team abandon uniform tradition in 2006. The current primary uniforms were billed as a compromise between tradition and the hideous modernity overreach the Vikings wore between 2006 and 2012, but I don’t see any tradition in the current uniforms. I just see a uniform with a lot fewer modern touches.

Please, please restore uniform tradition! Please bring back some vestige of Black and Blue Division identity that’s so important to the aesthetic of Vikings football!

To fans who agree with me, please speak out!

Joe Medley, Jacksonville, Ala.

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The contrast between team composition as shown by the owners of the Vikings and the Twins could not be more different. The Vikings went out in the offseason and signed several free agents, notably on defense. The results are a stunning success.

The Twins did nothing, and even at the trade deadline did little but add a pitcher they soon cut. If the Twins had signed another mid-level starter, just someone who could have helped the team to six more wins, they would have a playoff spot locked up instead of sitting on the outside looking in.

The Twins decided to go cheap, and it shows. Meanwhile, the Vikings invested and it, too, shows.

You get what you pay for.

John Joachim, Taylors Falls, Minn.

Landfills are inferior to waste-to-energy based on science, emissions and economics (“Burn trash or bury it? No clean answer,” Sept. 15). It’s folly to divert waste from any waste-to-energy facility to landfills.

Landfills discharge methane and toxic gases yet do not actually measure gas discharges. Landfills estimate air emissions. New monitoring has documented that landfills are “super emitters” of methane and other gases by the state of California, NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Landfills discharge 40% of California’s total methane. Actual gas discharges are hundreds of times larger than estimated. By contrast, waste-to-energy facilities measure all air emissions, including continuously monitoring stack emissions.

Landfills generate tens of millions of gallons of leachate. Landfills then simply dump the pollutants into the sewer. Toxic chemicals that drain out of the landfill pass through the sewage system and into the Mississippi River. The landfills pay the sewerage fee and have no further accountability for the pollution. The Environmental Protection Agency also says landfill leachate is a leading source of organic chemicals and toxics. By contrast, waste-to-energy facilities destroy toxic chemicals in trash.

Landfills collect millions of dollars in “host community fees” for Burnsville, Inver Grove Heights and Dakota County. The hosts tax other communities millions to dump waste at “their” landfills. This makes the local host cities and counties “partners.” By contrast, waste-to-energy plants aren’t authorized to collect host fees.

Decades implementing the Metropolitan Landfill Abatement Act and the Minnesota Waste Management Act show me landfills are dangerous and need much more robust pollution-control systems. By contrast, waste-to-energy systems are safer operations.

Sigurd Scheurle, Winona, Minn.

The writer is a former Minnesota Pollution Control Agency employee.

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I found the article about the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor being revived (”Shuttered Pa. nuclear plant to reopen,” Sept. 21) amusing. The same granola, sunshine-and-unicorns group sipping their caramel lattes behind the steering wheels of their electric vehicles are now suddenly concerned about future electrical needs of the country not being met? Never mind frivolous issues like heavy snow, cloudy days, lack of wind and nowhere to dispose of spent turbines. It’s easy to bash nuclear power until one realizes it also plays an important role in power generation. Even Microsoft is stepping up with a 20-year pledge to purchase nuclear-generated power. The irony is not lost on me.

Stephanie Yant, Andover