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True North

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Today’s post comes from Bart, the bear who found a smart phone in the woods.

H’lo, Bart here.

I’m hibernating right now, though we have our alert moments in between all the napping and torpor. So when I’m awake I check the Google news to see what’s going on, which is how I found out there’s new territory opening up to the north of here.

Bear territory, I mean. Polar bears are getting even more polar, real-estate wise. That means new places are opening up – sights I’ve never seen and fresh ursine experiences. Maybe I’m ready for a change. It would feel different to be the New Bear In Town.

Not that I’m all that excited about the prospect of moving north, especially when you see the area being vacated – it’s a lot of water that isn’t frozen as much as it used to be. But where there’s water, you might find some fish. And anyway, if bears to the north of us are moving away, that means bears to the south of us are moving closer.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve got nothing against southern bears. I just don’t like crowds.

So anyway … when I fall back to sleep in a minute or two, I’ll dream about going on an adventure to find an abandoned Polar Bear Palace in the distant wilds – my new Fortress of Solitude at the top of the world.

But really, I don’t think I’ll ever leave home.

Yawn,
Bart

Have you ever been part of a migration?

66 thoughts on “True North”

  1. my migration experiences have to do with technology migrations. when I started in business there was a secretary to type for you. I learned to give dictation and write letters with a cc at the end that stood for carbon copy followed by the secretary’s initials
    my secretary was named lee. she was a lady that had worked for my dad and his office partner for about 10 years and she was there for whatever I needed. then I tried typing my own letter. she congratulated me and made the comment that not too many guys could type their own quotes and letters. I was proud but the amount of white out required was a bit more than with her typing jobs (did you know mike nesmith of the monkeys mom invented white out) I eventually migrated to an electronic typewriter that worked with data cards that could do complex computations with typing that helped figure out delivered prices to multiple locations and using different products that could be interchanged. once that notion was in place computers and fax machines showed up and then all hell broke loose. desk top lap top smart phones tablets and social media. I used to think it was cool that I could talk to china at 5 in the afternoon and have a program done by the next morning. now it all happens al the time. it is all instantaneous and yet it seems to move slower. it is so quick the other human factors become the migration issues. do you know how to communicate in a way that gets it done with eh partners who are usually more savvy on the techno end of the equation than I am. can I teach them what I want in words that work for both of us.

    I moved to minneapolis when I was 3 and was certain wen I was a kid that california or canada or nyc would end up being my home but I really like it here. something about this place works just right for me. ive always thought a wee of travel a month and this as a home base would be the right combo for me. im thinking that’s about right

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  2. A friend of ours was part of a migration of native people into urban settings in the 1960’s. The government tried to resettle people from reservations into large cities. Many went to California. Our friend’s family tried out Chicago, where they lived in public housing. He developed a real love of Chicago blues. The family missed the reservation so much they only stayed a couple of years and then returned to ND.

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  6. When I consider myself and all the other Baboons who started life as Iowans and then migrated north to Minnesota, the obvious question is how there can be any people left in Iowa. I guess it is not true that “everyone” in Iowa moved to Minnesota. Just the smartest and boldest. 🙂

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    1. That observation about people moving from Iowa, Steve, reminds me of the Dane who said Dane’s are know as a jolly people. However, he said the jolly Danes were the ones that stayed in Denmark. The sour ones moved to this country.

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        2. Those I meet at the Danish American Center in Minneapolis seem more than content. They have a real nice time together in their own subdued fashion.

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    2. As a kid, every time Dad drove over the Minnesota /lowa border, l felt like a VlP of some kind. The felt prlvilege of temporarily being a “Minnesotan” occurred annually for or at east a decade of June vacations in Park Rapids on Long Lake at Edgewood Resort. l still remember Fuller’s Tackle Shop where my dad would proudly display the biggest Northern Pike in the window and where l was treated to a pair of Minnetonka moccasins each year. This was my proof of having been in the state when l got back home.

      l recently read that the two states with the greatest longevity are Hawaii and Minnesota. Go figure. There’s something special about a state where most people who’ve relocated come back to live.

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      1. My dad always said that Iowa was an acronym for “Idiot on wheels ahead”. He was born in George, IA, though, so I don’t think he had any right to criticize.

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  7. I suppose I have been part of the rural to urban migration like so many of my generation.

    I can tell you it is quite a task, swimming back against that flow.

    Kids going to college-this year is the scene of a lot of change at our house- the U has always looked really good, now I am hearing things like MIT…
    sigh

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      1. Qu’est-ce edx?

        MIT is without doubt a very fine school, as is Cornell or Columbia. Living in Boston or NYC is expensive-and that’s just the housing.

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        1. edx is the free online course school from mit harvard and i think they just added berkley.
          everywhere is expensive but scholarships will cover room and board too.
          most starting jobs for mit grads pay fo rthe shchooling pretty quickly.never heard of an mit grad in financial trouble

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  8. Good morning. Hardly anyone stays where they were born these days. One of my Uncles remained in Argyle Wisconsin, where he and my mother were born, for all but a few years. He was my favorite Uncle who was a great guy with small town and rural values that went out of style many years ago.

    My Dad moved us around as he found new jobs, although I did spend most of my youth in Jackson, Michigan. We moved one of our daughters from Indiana to Minnesota. The younger one was raised in just one location, Clarks Grove, MN. We though it best not to move kids around too much. I’m not sure we were right about that.

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    1. Jim, I used to hunt on a farm in central Iowa. The owner was a lonely widow. We called her The Cookie Lady because always served us cookies when we stopped to ask permission to hunt. She once told us that she had never in her life strayed outside a circle of about 30 miles in circumference. That’d how many folks used to live.

      They say that one of the huge impacts of the Civil War is that it caused folks who had never traveled to travel to far distant areas of the US. WWI made it difficult to keep kids down on the farm after they’d seen Paris. WWII not only showed many soldiers what Europe was like but it led some returning soldiers to eat such “foreign food” as spaghetti and meat balls.

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    2. I guess I sort of reverse migrated too.

      My parents both grew up in what is now the “outer rim”. I spent my entire childhood hoping to someday be a Minnesotan, and by jingle, I have done it.

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  9. Morning all. I migrated north right after high school – couldn’t wait in fact. I’m also part of the “migrate back to urban” group that mig is part of. I thought I was part of the “send you child off to college” group as well, but she came back!

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    1. boomerang child

      ive got one of those. I am so glad to have him back. know its just a matter of time before hell be gone for real and I hate to think of him being gone. I really like him. he needs to begin his own migration.

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        1. its hard turning form that little kid who wanted to be a leopard on Christmas to the young ladyi think rabid dog is an appropriate response to all the stuff involved to the transformation.
          I never had any issues with this of course but I understand that many mere mortals do have these problems.

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      1. she returned form eau claire for the summer and then before heading back decided to stay in town and get her next year (or two or three) here instead of out in the world. she is a captive under vs’s roof and has to live with the mom rules again. I expressed my condolences to her.

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  10. I have has 15 addresses, birth to now, with 8 cities as part of the address: Sebeka, Isabella, Two Harbors, Chicago, Mpls., St. Paul, N. Kato, Kato.

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  11. One trick to keeping children from returning home is to live in the middle of nowhere, so that anywhere they are is better than going back to mom and dad. Daughter is spending summer in Fargo, hoping to do a social Work internship. She will live in a condo that a college friend’s parents bought for their daughter (and mine) to live in for the next two years for ridiculously low rent a couple of blocks from the college. It is a new building with lots of amenities and even underground parking! Who would want to return to live in the basement in western ND? (Given Fargo’s penchant for flooding, I wonder about the wisdom of underground parking.)

    I see that a frozen stew of some sort, optimistically labeled by husband as “Catalan Delight” has migrated from the basement freezer to the kitchen counter. It seems to have green beans in it. We shall see how delightful it is at supper.

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  12. I have always wanted to buy the housing instead of paying rent but not been organized enough to do it.
    I have a business model where the parents who are moving out sell it to parents moving in and the property turns every 3 or 4 years. if your daughters friends parents are interested in discssing it I would be interested in using them a model for the project

    fargos flooding only happens near the river. never in fargo proper.

    I wuld like a report on the catala delight tomorrow. where di the name come form., what was in there how was it and did it get eaten as is or did you add stuff to it

    many people who don’t go back to the basement in the wasteland back home have a bad economic, depressed world to look at. western dakota is the midway at the state fair. want a chance for cashing in on opportunity? you are there. ill bet an internship in oil country would pay 50 dollars an hour.

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        2. True that, tim, but speaking from personal experience, by the time you reach my age you’re no longer quite so bright eyed and bushy tailed. At least I know I’m not.

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      2. There are no guarantees, but college years can be wonderful. For many of us, learning is its own thrill. I experienced my undergrad years as a fantastic introduction to new concepts, people, ways of thinking. The view forward is so exciting.

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  13. I was part of the migration to California… there were several of us from Iowa State, and I also ran into a couple of acquaintances from high school while living in San Francisco). Still not sure what drew me, but for one thing I wanted something new and exciting. I lasted two years in the city, two years on the coast, and then did a person migration to NYC that was just the last stop before migrating back here. So I’m one Iowan who ultimately came north, just took a roundabout route.

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  14. Some of you might have heard that I migrated west this past summer. I recently got a letter from the St Paul police department telling me I was being lax about clearing snow from the sidewalk at 2168 Juliet. The letter hinted that if I didn’t shape up they would waterboard me. I told them that when I left, on the first day of June, there was NO snow on the walks!

    It is mean of me to say this, but we are expecting temps near 50 degrees today.

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        1. thy announced yesterday or the day before that we could be looking at a 60 or 7 degee warm this week. it isn’t going to be 120 in your wimpy ass city is it

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    3. ah. this reminds me of the car towing tribulations during the nativty of the s&h.

      Twice, I was towed during a snow emergency. The first time, I went with the rest of my neighborhood (it was all, strangely enough, my neighborhood, then Grand Avenue) and after much messing about, they found me in the computer.

      The second time, I called and got THE SAME NUMBER for the reclaim. This concerned me, but I also had a baby in NICU taking up a lot of my brain, so I didn’t deal with it until I was there at the lovely lot by the State Fair. At that point, it became clear that their records in the computer that the guy was not quite sure how to use were all from the first time it was towed.

      I advised them that if they were unable to locate my car, it would be reported as stolen. They found my car.

      A couple of weeks later, I still have a baby in NICU and I get a registered letter that I have to get, not from the post office I drive by regularly, but from a post office on a street I have never heard of. I get there, I sign. Then I could not stop laughing and had to explain to the postal workers that this letter was to inform me that unless I claimed my car from the impound lot at exactly the location they had given me from the first towing, they were going to auction it off. so. there.

      In that that car had been sprung twice and I had the receipts AND that car had been driven to the far flung post office to get their letter, I figured if they could find it on their lot, they were welcome to auction it off.

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  15. Funny, despite having had at least 25 addresses in seven countries, on two continents, I don’t really consider myself as having been part of a migration. I think of a migration as a mass movement, and I don’t think I’ve been part of one.

    I am, however, part of the aging population that may be moving to retirement homes of some sort in the foreseeable future. We haven’t determined as yet where that might be, but unless global warming happens a lot faster than anticipated, I’m pretty sure it won’t be in Minnesota.

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  16. My parents moved to California in 1967. I was part of the migration, since I was 9 and didn’t have much of a say in the matter. I still don’t really know what prompted the move, but we returned to Wisconsin a year later.

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