Ramblings From the Bakken -- Notes to the Granddaughters -- New York Times Article on American Crystal Sugar

A note was sent to me over the weekend, more precisely this morning, regarding the links to the Minot and the Bismarck stories in the "lost decade" post. His observations back up what I said about Minot:

"Minot is going to become gridlock this summer, everybody will want everything and nothing will get done. All the flood work will start by the city, private investment will flow in and the fight for resources will be huge. We are already limited on how much concrete we can get each day."

Actually a lot will get done; it just won't seem like enough will get done. That's why God invented time: otherwise everything would happen at once.

It should be noted that there is no indication that the Bakken will slow down: we're back to 203 rigs, just one shy of the record. After seeing the number drop to 199 the other day, I am quite surprised that in the middle of the winter, the number has bounced back. 

Notes to My Granddaughters

Link here to a New York Times on union lockouts.

I have no dog in this fight except that of a spectator, like a spectator at a boxing match. It is incredible, I think, how "attractive" boxing was in this country some years ago (think: Muhammad Ali). I didn't get it then; I don't get it now. I was reminded of the role boxing played in national sports some years ago when I happened to catch American Gangster on cable the other evening.

I thought the linked story would be a bit more general in nature, but it turned out to be a story, for all intents and purposes, on the lockout at American Crystal Sugar, the nation's (the world's?) largest sugar beet processor. The writer did talk a bit about recent lockouts in professional sports, but I don't recall any other example.

The occasional American Crystal Sugar lockout story reminds me of a boxing match: both will come out bloodied, and I'm not sure if either side will benefit all that much when it's over. But it does "show" the frustration -- and perhaps that's it -- it's no longer about what's best for either, but it's simply frustration with "the system."

So, I link it here because anything about North Dakota that hits the national news I find fascinating.

Some years ago I was reading a biography of Ernest Hemingway. There was a very short vignette in the biography in which Hemingway runs into a young woman from North Dakota while both were in Spain. I don't have the book with me, but if I recall, the woman was from Williston. At the time I tried tracking down more information on that little vignette but nothing came of it.

So, now I'm reading a new biography of EH (as the pros refer to him): Paul Hendrickson's 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award-winning book -- Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961. I've read most (?) of the most important biographies of EH, including those by three of his four wives. (I don't know if all four wrote biographies; it seems to me they did.)

The Hendrickson book is surprisingly good. Wonderful writing. And, then, incredibly, a connection with North Dakota. The 35-page chapter, "Shadow Story" was all about a would-be, wannabe, writer from White Earth, North Dakota, who sailed with Hemingway the first year the famous writer had his new / first boat, Pilar.  As noted, the chapter is 35 pages long and takes up a significant amount of space in this 467-page book, not including extensive notes. All other biographers have captured this 10-month period of time in a throwaway sentence, or perhaps a footnote in Hemingway's life, but Hendrickson has captured the essence of Hemingway, and of a wannabe writer, a North Dakota farm boy who had never been on a "ship" until that summer with EH.

Arnold Morse Samuelson is not someone I would have wanted to be near as based on what the author writes about him. The biographer talks with his daughter Dian: "Could he never recover from Hemingway? I don't know. Did he feel he could never live up to what he wanted for himself as a writer, after being on Pilar? She paused. "What I think I now know about him is that his whole life was overwhelmed by that year with Hemingway. Nothing was ever the same."

Clearly Samuelson had his issues before he met Hemingway, but just the same, he never did recover, nothing was ever the same, after that near-year with EH.

I assume most folks have a summer, a winter, a year, a period in their lives from which they will never recover, or after which nothing will be the same. For most, it's a "coming of age" story. For me, it was the summer I sold dictionaries door-to-door in Westfield, New Jersey.  That was absolutely the most challenging thing I had done in life up to that point, and, looking back, nothing since has been more challenging, including medical school and residency. Rarely a day goes by when I don't think back on that summer. I would could never do it again, knowing what I know now. But then.... Unfortunately there is no YouTube video of Garth Brooks singing "The Dance."

And yes, that summer developed into a coming of age story for me, also, but it occurred somewhat later.