Tesoro Uses Organic Oil -- That's Why President Trump Will Visit North Dakota -- September 4, 2017

I was wondering why President Trump would fly all the way out to Bismarck-Mandan, ND, to visit an oil refinery.

A reader explained it to me: the Tesoro refinery uses:

• American oil (Bakken oil, to be specific); and, 
• organic oil.

Note: Tesoro changed its name to Andeavor on August 1, 2017. 

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The American Road Trip

The WSJ has a great essay in this week's "Review": The Romance of the American Road Trip.

My second car was a muscle car, a 1973, Chevrolet SuperSport Nova. My dad bought it for me from a dealer in Williston (on the Million Dollar Way) and I drove it out to California. Those were my coming of age years and I remember sharing many wonderful drives in that care with three different women over the course of several years. One of the three is now my wife.

Some decades ago I was concerned that our granddaughters would never  have that same opportunity to enjoy the "American road trip." Not to worry any more. The Bakken shale revolution changed all that.

Apparently, the writers of "The Romance of the American Road Trip" had the same thoughts. The American road trip is back.

The article begins with Zelda and F Scott Fitzgerald who, on the spur of the moment, took a 1,200-mile journey from Westport, Connecticut, to Montgomery, Alabama, after Zelda complained that the north did not have authentic Southern biscuits and/or fresh peaches.

The writer goes on to write about essays of the American road trip to include references to Edith Wharton's 1934 autobiography, A Backward Glance.

From the article:

Not much on Earth can beat the American road trip in travel for a sense of freedom -- no pat-down, no passport, no airport muddle, just revving an engine and leaving at will. Thought the driverless cars that await us might have their uses in dense city traffic or on tedious LA freeways, they will certianly diminish the exuberance of a driver gripping the wheel, flooring it and rejoicing, "Eat my dust."

And later,

Nowhere else int he world (though Canad is a contender) is it possible to drive 3,000 miles -- the distance from Boston to Los Angeles -- and be certain that you will encounter no roadblocks or obstructions; that you will always find a place to stay and somewhere to eat; and that you will be privileged to observe a river the equal of the Ganges or the Yangtze, mountains as great as the Himalayas, a desert as dramatic as any in Africa or Asia, and fertile fields and pastures of grazing animals unmatched in the world.

My next road trip will be from Portland, OR, to Flathead Lake, Montaan, albeit a short trip in the big scheme of things.

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Bayou

The WSJ also had a nice essay on the word "bayou."

“Bayou,” meaning a slow-moving creek or river, is a term used all around the Gulf Coast region. It might not be so well-understood elsewhere, however. Merriam-Webster registered that 100 times more people than usual looked up the word in its online dictionary over the weekend, when Harvey was first bearing down on Houston.

People from outside the region may be vaguely familiar with the word’s meaning from songs like “Blue Bayou” by Texas native Roy Orbison (a song later covered by Linda Ronstadt ) or “Born on the Bayou” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, from their 1969 album “Bayou Country.” (Actually, the band’s main songwriter, John Fogerty, was born in Berkeley, Calif., and had little experience with bayous.)

The word “bayou” looks and sounds French, but its origin is actually Native American. It is originally derived from “bayuk,” meaning “a small stream” in the Choctaw language historically spoken in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. Most members of the Choctaw tribe were forcibly relocated to Oklahoma in the 1830s, though about 5,000 Choctaw speakers can still be found in Mississippi.

“Bayou” entered the American varieties of French and English in the 18th century, but scholars believe the word first passed through a Native American lingua franca called Mobilian Jargon, a simplified pidgin that allowed members of different tribes to communicate with each other for trade purposes.

French speakers in Louisiana, then a territory of New France, picked up the Choctaw word “bayuk” from the trading jargon, and they turned the word into “bayouque” and eventually “bayou.” English speakers borrowed it from French, though the spelling took a while to settle down. In 1767, while on a river trip through the South, Captain Harry Gordon wrote in his journal about navigating his way out of New Orleans, saying that he “lay that night at the Bayoue.”

By the time Houston was founded in 1836 at the confluence of Buffalo Bayou and White Oak Bayou, the term was a common part of the Gulf Coast landscape. It would become so intimately associated with Houston that only 20 years after its founding, in 1856, it had earned the nickname “Bayou City,” according to research by the word historian Barry Popik. In the mid-20th century, Houston also got called “Baghdad on the Bayou,” modeled on the short-story writer O. Henry’s affectionate name for New York, “Baghdad-on-the-Subway.”  

Much more at the link.

Born on the Bayou, Creedence Clearwater Revival