On Sentimentality and Why "I Love My North Dakota"

CRC alerted me to a second music video of "I Love My North Dakota" by Adam Taylor. I have both videos linked at the sidebar on the right under "North Dakota Sights and Sites."

The music is the same in both; the pictures are different and that makes it worth linking both of them.

Coincidentally, I am reading H. L. Mencken's highly acclaimed, and probably highly maligned, book, In Defense of Women. Don't let the title fool you; it's as much about men as it is about women.

Mencken argues that ...

Men are sentiment. Men are romantic, and love what they conceive to be virtue and beauty. Men incline to faith, hope and charity. Men know how to sweat and endure. Men are amiable and fond. But in so far as they show the true fundamentals of intelligence -- in so far as they reveal a capacity of discovering the kernel of eternal verity in the husk of delusion and hallucination and a passion for bringing it forth -- to that extent, at least, they are feminine, and still nourished by the milk of their mothers.

Find me an obviously intelligent man, a man free of the first class, and I'll show you a man with a wide streak of woman in him. Bonaparte had it; Goethe had it; Schopenhauer had it; Bismarck and Lincoln had it; in Shakespeare, ...

That probably explains my own feelings regarding North Dakota. I am very sentimental, very much a romantic. That explains, by the way, although I post a lot of investing stories, I have never taken investing as seriously as I probably should have and another reason for the disclaimer.






Some time ago I posted something that caught the attention of someone who had very negative feelings about North Dakota. The writer was from Minnesota or California, I forget, but I think it was Minnesota. Most of the negative comments about North Dakota come from folks living in those two states. Smile. But I digress.

As I was saying, I recently posted something that caught the attention of someone who had very negative comments about North Dakota. I believe she was an investor and said that without commodities (oil and grain) North Dakota would have nothing; she said North Dakota needed to diversify. The writer did not identify her maleness/femaleness, but H.L. Mencken would have identifed her as a woman based on her concerns about North Dakota's lack of diversity. Smile.

Looking at the photos that accompany the two videos suggest to me that North Dakota is as diversified as it needs to be.

[I doubt the video shows the huge United States Air Force presence in the state; or the very impressive secondary education system; or UND's aviation program, just to name a few things that could be added to the list if anyone thought it necessary. I guess I did, but shouldn't have. The videos and the song are more than enough.]

For similar thoughts, visit the Richard Torrance site, "the stories they tell."  "oldspeed" alerted me to the site.