Sunday

The Bakken

Don sent me a couple of nice items this morning. Perhaps the most interesting, The Dickinson Press is reporting:

North Dakota passed a milestone recently by exceeding 10,000 births, a benchmark that last was reached almost 25 years ago.

The moment happened in 2012, when 10,072 resident births were recorded. North Dakota last surpassed 10,000 births in 1988, when 10,111 babies were born.

North Dakota again exceeded 10,000 births in 2013, although the official figure has yet to be compiled.

I remember when I first started blogging about the Bakken, pundits said spouses would not come, families would not stay.

Speaking of families, look at the wonderful photo accompanying this article:

Paul and Marcia Whitcomb thought they’d be temporary North Dakotans, working in the oilfield to earn money and someday returning to Arkansas.

But now the couple and their four children are permanent Williston residents, working oilfield jobs that will be around long after drilling is over and finally living in a house after two years in an RV.

“We couldn’t have the jobs we have or live this way or live in a house this nice anywhere else we went in the country right now,” Paul said.

But getting to this point required some sacrifices, a fact the family knew when they decided to move to North Dakota. Paul, formerly an over-the-road truck driver, had delivered tanks for hydraulic fracturing to the area and knew about the housing shortage.
“I knew that the living situation would be difficult,” Paul said.

One thing not mentioned was the fact how good the schools are in Williston and how much the children will enjoying growing up there. I certainly look back at Williston with very, very fond memories.

The Wall Street Journal

Hiring slowdown blurs growth view. Dismal jobs report raises questions over economy's strength as year ended.  This graphic from the linked article pretty much says it all: not even back to wehre we were in 2008, and not even close where we need to be:

The good news: the unemployment rate is down to an incredible 6.7%. And "incredible" is exactly the right word.

Op-Ed: the latest jobs miss. The fifth year of the Obama recovery brings more dispiriting news.

The current recovery never fails. Just when you think it might shift into higher gear, the economy delivers a thud like Friday's disappointing jobs report for December. The Labor Department says the U.S. produced only 74,000 net new jobs in the month, while the jobless rate fell to 6.7% from 7% mainly because some 347,000 Americans left the labor force.

The saving grace may be that winter weather is responsible for some of the sharp decline from the recent monthly trend closer to 190,000 new jobs, and it's possible the numbers will be revised upward as they were last December and this November. Recent economic indicators, including the private ADP jobs survey and consumer confidence, had suggested better job news.

There was probably a whole lot more in yesterday's edition but I sure didn't see much that interested me in the on-line edition.

***********************************

A Note to the Granddaughters

I flew back to Dallas-Ft Worth (from Long Beach, California) last night on US Airways. I left the car out in California (I had driven from Dallas to Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago for the holidays). It will save me one cross-country trip, though I enjoy the trips. I flew back to "Big-D-little-a-double-l-a-s" to be in place to take care of the granddaughters this next week.

Later in the month (or early February) I will fly back to Long Beach, pick up the car, and drive cross country to Williston, North Dakota, to see my dad, and the Bakken. After a long week in Williston, I will drive back to Texas.

The flight was uneventful. US Airways is now, or soon will be, part of American Airlines. I guess it already is; they just have to re-paint the planes, get new uniforms for the employees, etc. My understanding is that employees of both American Airlines and US Airways are thrilled with the "merger."

May gave me a copy of Bill Bryson's A Lost Continent, as a Christmas present. I started reading this book some years ago, but never got past the first chapter, but on the flight last night enjoyed it, and am about halfway through. Bryson moved to England some years ago but writes frequently about the United States: I think he rose to national prominence with Notes From a Small Island, or A Walk In The Woods.

For A Lost Continent, he flew back to Iowa, and then began a cross-country trip in his mother's Chevette. Maybe I enjoy the book more this time because we have now visited or lived in most, if not all, of the states he travels through and writes about. From Des Moines (my mother was born and raised in northwestern North Dakota) he drove to Illinois, and then south through Kentucky and Tennessee to Mississippi and Alabama, and then up to the coast through Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia to where he is now (halfway through the book: Washington, DC).

Kentucky is about the only state in which we have not spent much time. My son-in-law is from Louisville, and that's where the granddaughters' other grandparents live. My favorite author, perhaps, Hunter S. Thompson, is also from Louisville.

[Speaking of HST, I don't know if one can have a favorite author any more. I wonder if it's better to say we have favorite books from favorite writers. Hunter is on my short list but I only enjoyed two books of his, Hell's Angels and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I don't remember the second so much because the movie has overwritten in my brain whatever I had previously read in the book.]

[Likewise, I used to say that Virginia Woolf was my favorite writer, but again, I enjoyed a couple of her books, notably Mrs Dalloway, but that was about it.]

Like Bill Bryson, we were surprised how wonderful Mississippi was. We visited Mississippi on one memorable occasion while living for two years in Montgomery (Prattville), Alabama.

Bryson says Charleston, South Carolina, was one of the most charming cities he had visited up to that time. We lived in Charleston for four years and I would have to agree that the city was one of the most charming we have ever lived in.

Bryson writes well, and at times, he writes very, very well. I wish I could write half as well. Be that as it may, he probably doesn't know much about the Bakken.