Sure, you can go to North Dakota to look for work, but it's the scenery and the climate that will make you stay.

Old white ex-Californians need services.

Can you get a decent coffee anywhere? And those, you know, little pastry sort of things?

(An acquaintance of mine who once went to Wyoming to shoot a Marlboro ad swears that one of the imported camera-people asked him that question, word for word. This was 1967 or so. The answer was no.)

3: I'm assuming you mean "non-Lutheran" coffee. There seem to be 6 Caribous and 4 Starbuckses in NoDak. I just spent last night getting my ear talked off by a stoner geology grad student (oh, I'm sorry, was that redundant?) from North Dakota, but the question of decent coffee only vaguely came up. He did not know what "cold-press" was, and was astonished at our signature drink of cold-press plus B/ack Labe/.

Correction: 6 Starbuckses. But Winnipeg has 3 times that many.

||

Is This not the very model of a Nobeller? I want a blowiup for my wall, and I have nothing else on my walls.

|>

6: It really wasn't that hot in Princeton today. I see no excuse for those shorts.

7: Maybe he was fresh out of pants. Did you ever consider that possibility, essear? I bet you did not.

4: Are you google-proofing B/ack Labe/, or are you just trying to make the name more metal?

John Emerson spotted in the wild, so the species is not yet extinct!

This was evidently a spotting of the rare Portland species of Emerson commenter and not the more common Minne commenter.

max
['I'll bet that's an Emerson in the bush over there on that other thread.']

I would, as a MNan, dislike ND more were I not familiar with the Hjemkomst ship center, Fargo's planetarium, and that crazy Trollwood fleamarket/farmer's market/theatre annual event. Fightin' Dragons!

Emerson is currently discussing Les Paul on CT.

yeah, I was going to rush over and tell you all that emerson was alive, but I see the news is out.

13: Still a pleasure to have you by, rosy toes.

Alive, and apparently in a complicated relationship. Or so the facebook status updates would have you believe.

re: 12

Yes, with people who don't know much about Les Paul! And fat Scottish guitar players ....

So she moved to Bismarck, North Dakota to get a job "answer[ing] phone calls from people who had dialed 1-800 numbers to complain about their cereal," and the best housing she could find was "a mobile home with an addition, unoccupied for three years and spotted with mildew." At 63 and with a college degree yet. I find that situation hard to envy.

Then too, being somewhat "tone deaf" I can't quite grasp the point of the article. Was it schaudenfreude? Or maybe it's meant to shame us with "You think YOU got it bad, this one old lady...." Or maybe, like a young professional once said to me about the old East Asian women collecting cans and bottles in the Tenderloin, it's "Ya gotta admire her can-do enterprising spirit; that's how Freedom beat the Soviets!"

What I feel compared to her is lucky: I managed to find an income source that's more or less iron-clad, where my biggest worry is finding a landlord who'll rent to someone on SSI ($674/mo. now), and I did that in back 1986. The Voices tell me I should thank the U.S. taxpayers and wish you folks the best: as long as y'all keep working whatever regular legal jobs you can scrape up, I won't have to move to Bismarck, ND to beg spare change from old women who work at call centres.

(Ain't America great? Our old ladies get shacks with wheels!)

TD!

The Voices tell me I should thank the U.S. taxpayers and wish you folks the best: as long as y'all keep working whatever regular legal jobs you can scrape up, I won't have to move to Bismarck, ND to beg spare change from old women who work at call centres.

Quite so. Pity the folks who managed to have the connections to get the monopoly positions that allows them to regularly tax the income stream are so goddamn resentful about the 500 bucks a month.

max
['An Emerson-McManus-Minne-Stras-TD mindmeld would be awesome.']

13: yeah, I was going to rush over and tell you all that emerson was alive, but I see the news is out.

Oh, yeah! Almost forgot! We can do a flick about the young heroin addicts internet addicts who like commit crime comment on blogs and stuff - and we call it Emersonspotting! High concept!

max
['I mean, is that awesome or what?']

Who's Emerson? And can we leave out the scene with the suppository?

Charlie Christian was discovered in Bismarck, N.D., whereas Peggy Lee was discovered in Fargo, and Mary Osborne grew up in Bismarck (where she heard Christian play) but was discovered in St. Louis.