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<\/p>\nNote to all you folks thinking of moving to North Dakota to start cashing in on the oil boom:\u00a0 North Dakota is cold.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
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There aren’t a lot of trees.\u00a0 And outside of the eight or nine\u00a0significant-sized cities (Fargo, Grand Forks, Jamestown, Devil’s Lake, Bismark\/Mandan, Minot, Williston, Dickinson, and maybe Valley City), there just aren’t a whole lot of people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
More below the jump, so the rest of the page can load…<\/p>\n
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But you know the stereotypes.<\/p>\n
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What the place lacks in trees and people, it makes up for in wind, and windy cold in the winter, and windy dry heat in the summer, and a\u00a0horizon that’s far enough away to give an agoraphobiac a seizure.\u00a0 And above it all,\u00a0a sky that a schoolgirl – a young African-American girl whose parents were stationed at Minot Air Force Base – once referred to as “big and blue and full of the mind of God” to an observer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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We’ll come back to that quote, and the\u00a0observer,\u00a0in a bit.<\/p>\n
As NPR, and MPR, and the New York Times <\/a>tell us (and tell us, and tell us), the oil boom is not an unalloyed blessing to everyone.\u00a0 Breitbart, in a story about the increase in oil production in the state<\/a>, embedded this video, from Time magazine, about three transplants (one from the Iron Range) who are having their misgivings about living in the boom.\u00a0 The guys – a roughneck and a trucker – are bored with man camps and having nothing to do but working, drink, watch TV and play video games.\u00a0 The woman – a gofer – misses people and free time and an outside world.\u00a0<\/p>\n The video clocks at about 13 minutes, and is worth a watch.<\/p>\n