Journalist, cause celebre, Fargo North/Concordia(Moorhead) alum and former Miss North Dakota, Roxana Saberi, came back to Fargo on Saturday for the first time since being freed from quasi-legal kidnapping in Iran:

The 32-year-old Saberi was greeted at the Fargo airport by a crowd of well-wishers and “Welcome home, Roxana” signs. Saberi, fighting back tears, said she was surprised at the emotions she felt.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever really cried in public,” she said.

Gov. John Hoeven and Rep. Earl Pomeroy were among the officials who met her after she stepped off the plane Saturday afternoon.

North Dakota is a very small place.  Even Fargo – by far the largest city – reflects a lot of the state’s small-town past.  And when I say “small town”, it’s more than just the fact that the towns are, y’know, small.  The place is isolated; small North Dakota towns are little tiny islands of civilization on a huge ocean of soil that, until recently, isolated people almost as effectively as water.  And ironically in such a huge, sparsely-populated place, privacy is almost impossible to come by; in a small town, or even in a big city populated by people who mostly come from smaller towns, everyone knows everything about you, good or bad, sometimes before you know it yourself.

Now, it’s not the same place it was when I grew up; many of the smaller towns, the old railroad whistle stops between the bigger cities, are drying up and blowing away; the internet and ubiquitous communications have come a long way in connecting even the most remote outposts to the outside world.  And you know the place is getting more cosmpolitan when Microsoft is among the the state’s biggest employers, and especially when the state’s long string of blond-haired, blue-eyed Scandinavian and German-descended beauty queens are joined by someone of Farsi-Japanese descent.  Things are obviously changing; perhaps that sense of never having any personal space is changing with it; I don’t honestly know.

But while I’m not qualified to speak for Ms. Saberi, it’s that lack of privacy – the sense that everyone is privy to your business, whatever it is – that drove, maybe still drives, a lot of us who leave the place.   Because the downside is, you’re never alone.

Of course, when things get ugly – when your town is flooding, when your daughter is missing, when catastrophe strikes you from out of the blue – the upside is, you’re also never alone. 

At any rate, welcome back, Ms. Saberi!