While northern Europe and Asia are experiencing unusually cold winter weather, here in the center of North America winter has been unusually mild of late. Temperatures are about 15 degrees above average in January, and today they’re expected to climb well into the 40s in southern Minnesota. We’re on track to have the warmest January in Minnesota since 1846, according to the Minnesota Climatology Working Group. We may also go an entire January without subzero temperatures for only the second time since 1891. In addition, we’ve had only an inch of snow this month.

Meteorologists tell us that a split jet stream is partly responsible for this situation as its northern branch holds colder air far to the north and allows warm Pacific air to drift over the region. Meanwhile, the jet stream’s southern branch holds stormy weather to the south. We’re in a calm no-man’s-land in between.

For a winter sports enthusiast like myself, the warm weather is disappointing. However, I’ve come up with a formula that helps me cope with winter no matter what the temperature. If it’s unusually warm, as it is now, I get to enjoy more comfortable weather and the convenience of wearing less clothing. If it’s colder, say with highs in the twenties or low thirties, I can do winter sports such as skiing, sledding, and skating (provided snow and ice are available). If it’s really cold, with temperatures or windchills from the low teens to below zero, I can stay inside and catch up on reading and household projects.

Although I’m disappointed I won’t be skiing for a while, maybe I can get my bike out again. I’ve already had it out once during this unusual January.

The Vikings’ football season has been over for a few weeks now. Playoffs are underway without our team again, and a new head coach has been hired.

Readers may remember that in October I was upset by the Vikings “love boat” scandal, the players-and-prostitutes orgies that allegedly occurred during a party on two different Lake Minnetonka cruise boats. I’m still bothered by the descriptions of that incident and what they say about the character of many professional football players. Money and fame and their accompanying power seem to have given these athletes a sense that they can use others for their own pleasure. I don’t feel like being another fan inflating the egos of our puffed-up sports stars.

Here is what I wrote in the October 28 post on the scandal: “Will I watch the Vikings again? Maybe, if the team seems to make some kind of meaningful response to the situation.” Well, there hasn’t been much of a response to the situation from the team or the league, so I didn’t watch a minute of the rest of the season.

I went through some Vikings withdrawal during my boycott. On Sunday afternoons I was acutely aware that a game was going on and that I was not following its progress. I had been a fan for so many years that it had become a deeply ingrained habit. Whenever I came near the living room, I was tempted to turn the TV on, but my resolve to take a principled stand held.

It’s been a lonely boycott. Aside from some newspaper letter writers, I haven’t heard of many others turning away from football, as I did. Life has gone on, and many people brush the incident off or forget about it. And yet, it seems there is less sympathy for the team and less support for a publicly subsidized Vikings stadium.

We’re still waiting for legal proceedings regarding the Lake Minnetonka incident to play out. A handful of Viking players have been charged with lewd behavior. I’ll follow the news and see what happens over the off-season.

The pull to become a fan again is a strong one. We’re inundated with media coverage of the team, our neighbors talk about them, and for those of use who have been fans since we were children, the sport connects us to our region and to the past, to a childhood when a victory by our home team seemed momentous.

If I do become a fan again, I’ll take it all in with a greater measure of jaded cynicism. Like anyone else, I enjoy being amazed and entertained by sports stars whose abilities far surpass us average folk. But I don’t like it when those same players—who receive rewards far greater than those given to most of us—rub their privilege and power in our faces. We have enough of that already in our culture as a whole.

From time to time I’ll revise the list of links that appears on the right side of the Northern Letter homepage. No list of Upper Midwest-related links on this page can be comprehensive, and mine will continue to reflect my own idiosyncratic outlook. That said, I’ll try to keep the list relevant to topics that appear frequently in this column, including regional geography, literature, weather, media, and politics. What follows are some comments on links I’ve added today.

MNspeak.com was voted best blog of the year by Mpls St. Paul Magazine, although it seems like much more than a blog to me. It’s an innovative website that covers Twin Cities culture and media. (Should it be called TCspeak.com?) One highlight of the site is its aggregator, which “collects posts from 200 locally-authored blogs and media sources” (including this column-slash-blog). It’s a handy way to organize the regional blogosphere, and there’s even a geographical view. Also interesting are the site’s “phlogs,” or phone logs–audio comments that participants add via phone. Mnspeak.com claims to be the first place on the Internet to host a phlog. See the upper right of the MNspeak.com homepage to find the current phlog. Finally, check out Rex Sorgatz’s April 2005 post on the founding of MNspeak.com for more about this cool website.

The academic in me is encouraged by the existence of the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. And the weather nut in me loves Minnesota meterologist Paul Douglas—both his writing and his broadcasting. See his Star Tribune column and his WCCO-TV Weather Notes blog for his take on the latest regional weather and more. His more occasional personal blog, Weather Trends and Technology, is excellent and frequently describes the scientific evidence for global warming. It’s got nice pictures too.