<p>Much obliged, momof3, for the correction. I am continually amazed by the things I learn on this site.</p>
<p>Are there facial expressions that go along with the different meanings, or is it just so danged windy everyone wears a full face ski mask most of the year?</p>
<p>ND is the current answer-to-economic-woes meme. Does anyone remember in the early 80s when rust-belt unemployment victims were told to “vote with their feet” and go south, to Texas and such? Many ended up living in their cars and desperate. Easy answers like “go to Flavor of the month” do not solve real problems.</p>
<p>I have a number of friends who live in/near Fargo/Grand Forks, ND + Moorhead, MN. UND is nice. It would be colder there than where I live now (but warmer than where I grew up). I’d move there (or advise one of the kids to move there) if there were a good job opportunity there. I probably wouldn’t retire there. ;)</p>
<p>Sure.</p>
<p>I know lots about North Dakota.</p>
<p>When my daughter was in third grade, everyone had to do a report on a state. She got stuck with North Dakota. I had to help her find information about it. It was supposed to be interesting information. Oh, joy. </p>
<p>I’m so glad those days are over.</p>
<p>I’m also glad I live in the Washington, DC area, where unemployment isn’t all that bad and probably never will be because practically everyone here works directly or indirectly for the federal government. Recession or no recession, there’s still quite a lot of slop in the federal trough.</p>
<p>Realistically speaking, North Dakota is not in my future.</p>
<p>No, as in never.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Legal careers aren’t what anyone would call portable. Never mind the work of studying another state’s law I know nothing about, and passing another bar exam. After 30 years as a New York lawyer, the primary professional asset I have is my experience practicing law here. That experience would be worth virtually nothing in North Dakota. </p></li>
<li><p>I just moved back to Manhattan two years ago, and hope never to leave again. </p></li>
<li><p>There are, supposedly, 400 Jews in North Dakota. That’s 0.1%, and fewer than any other state except (you guessed it) South Dakota. I suspect that there are more Jews than that living on my block here in Washington Heights. The culture shock alone would be more than I could take. </p></li>
<li><p>My soon-to-be 92-year old father, and most of my relatives, are here.</p></li>
<li><p>Even leaving Jewishness aside, places like North Dakota aren’t exactly the friendliest environment for people like me. Or my son. I would never, ever want to live in such a place, or, God forbid, have my son live in such a place. We’ve had more than one discussion about the very limited number of places in the USA where it would be feasible for either of us to live. Most of you have no idea whatsoever about how dangerous a place like North Dakota could be for him, or for me.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>In other words, I’d rather do almost anything at all in New York than be the Empress of North Dakota. And my answer wouldn’t really have been much different 30 years ago.</p>
<p>My cousin’s wife’s uncle’s family settled in Minot in the 50’s. They had five kids so are likely the 0.1% of the population which is Jewish. ;)</p>
<p>I don’t know what he did for a living but whatever it was made him a very wealthy man. </p>
<p>They also wintered in Florida which helps.</p>
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<p>Donna, I have to issue with this. The people in North Dakota are very friendly. Maybe friendly isn’t the right word. Good-hearted and accepting might be better. They are reserved, but are very good people. They may even go out of their way to get to know you, just because you are Jewish. Keep in mind, though, that the “booming” areas are now mostly outsiders, or people from other areas. It’s kind of a “wild west” atmosphere.</p>
<p>Toledo, I don’t think Donna was referring to her religion with that statement. I think she is referring to LGBT issues.</p>
<p>I’ve never been to North Dakota, and I’m not a member of any particular group, but here in fly-over country (Midwest) unless you’re in a large urban/suburban area if you’re ‘not from here’ visibly or audibly 
let’s just say it’s not as comfy as it would be in other, more, ehem, enlightened parts of the country. </p>
<p>In Louisiana, really, people were the friendly, good hearted, accepting, etc type (South / Cajun, NOLA areas). Moved to fly-over country in the mid 80’s and I felt I was a pioneer, horse drawn wagon, the works. I mean, nothing to make Mrs. Tiger Turbo at ease when we went shopping in a local supermarket and she found a “Dog Food, Cat Food, Asian Food” sign in a grocery aisle… And that was in a major city, not a 50,000 people hamlet.</p>
<p>Fast forward 30 years and things have improved considerably in the larger cities/burbs, but in the hamlets, not so much. Illegal immigration has done a lot of damage in the sense that resentment has spilled over ‘legals’ as well… Wasn’t more than 5 years ago when DD1’s gym teacher made some rather inappropriate ethnic comments about her (I did cause him considerable grief for this, tho) but even now, we’re not Chicago, and won’t ever be.</p>
<p>It’s interesting how people feel differently. If you changed the thread title to, “Would you move to Manhattan for work?” I would answer with a resounding, “NO!” :)</p>
<p>Not quite the same - I spent a summer working in Cambridge, Mass and absolutely loved it. That was BC of course (Before Children). AC (After Children), the Boston area is not remotely as enticing unless one is a solid 1%'er or commutes from Farawaystan… Without children, Manhattan would be quite an adventure. With children…</p>
<p>Likewise, I spent a month in Portland, OR. Loved the place as well, and could really see myself settling there, family and all. </p>
<p>There are some nice, livable, decent economy cities here in Flyoveria. Columbus, OH, Cincy, Urbana-Champaign, West Lafayette, Madison, Ann Arbor, etc. are all pretty nice, if you have a decent job. But move to a non-college-town or a non-million-people city and things get iffy in a hurry… </p>
<p>Maybe I need to open the Paducah, KY branch of the Elbonian-American Chamber of Commerce (where’s Paducah, anyway?)</p>
<p>I’m on the MA homeschoolers list and one of the national ones and I gather that Cambridge is a pretty good place to homeschool given the resources in the area. The people on the lists don’t appear to be wealthy either. If you want really good schools for your kids, then that could be a problem in Boston. I understand that Cambridge does have some very good schools but I don’t know how seats are allocated. You do need a lot of money for the good private schools.</p>
<p>A guy that I used to work for (he founded the small (~10) consulting company that I worked at for a while in the 1980s) wound up working in Manhatten and he lived with a large number of other guys in housing that was probably similar or even more cramped than that housing in ND that was linked yesterday. He had a tiny room to sleep in and I don’t know that the bed was private - maybe you just slept in whatever was free at the time. This guy was making a nice living compared to his expenses in the Boston area. He had a membership at the Longwood Cricket Club and he had invited me to play there a few times. It was the first time that I’d played on grass courts. So to go from a life of luxury to really cramped living quarters to be in Manhatten? He started another computer company in the boonies in New Hampshire later on. I should look him up.</p>
<p>There’s something to be said for “the boonies,” especially when you’re within driving distance of Boston.</p>
<p>I’m taking my son from NH into Boston this week - he should be in his apartment on Monday of next week. I’m getting reacquainted with Boston traffic (I’m a veteran from the 80s) and I’m amazed at the ability of the Garmin to save great quantities of time in the commute. The transformer fire last night probably caused some problems and there was a traffic accident near his workplace so I dropped him off at the T-station. Was tempted to drop him off at Commuter Rail station way outside of Boston but we looked at the schedules and it would take just as long, or even longer, via Commuter Rail. I’m working from a library nearby that has free parking.</p>
<p>We’re located in a place that’s an hour from Boston (without traffic), less than an hour to the beaches in NH and a little over an hour to the beaches in Maine. We have good access to the White Mountains too. It’s fairly quiet where we are and I never have to deal with traffic. The huge new mall may change that to some extent.</p>
<p>I think that New England is a great place to live - there are many options for raising your kids and you can spend a lot of money or a little money depending on the mix of what you want. It is a costly area (especially energy costs) but if you have the income to deal with that, then it can be nice. One thing that I especially like about NH and MA is the general educational level. MA is #1 in the country for percentage with college degrees. CT is #2. NH is #3.</p>
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<p>This is something I wonder about, especially with respect to my kids, who are utterly unremarkable on the coasts but might be considered freaks in fly-over country, given that they are half-Jewish and diehard atheists. </p>
<p>You don’t have to go very far inland to get to areas where people other than white Christians of northern European origin are regarded with discomfort. </p>
<p>When my daughter was a student at Cornell, she and about 150 other students would take charter buses to Bethesda, Maryland, for each of the breaks. Because these students were from the DC suburbs – an extremely diverse area – they were about as ethnically varied as you could possibly imagine – Asians, Hispanics, African Americans, Jews, and various mixtures of the above, as well as a small minority of light-haired white people (we do have a few). </p>
<p>During each trip, the bus would stop at a McDonalds in the middle of rural Pennsylvania, where their presence caused obvious discomfort to the locals, all of whom were white and many of whom were blond. Having three busloads of mostly dark-haired and often dark-skinned young people descend on them was not something they could deal with easily. I don’t think they would have dealt with it easily even if they knew that the young people were from a highly respected university. The kids’ physical appearance was simply outside the Pennsylvanians’ comfort zone.</p>
<p>Marion, in my experience the looks are not that of discomfort but of curiosity. I think you will find that the majority of people in the Midwest are very open and accepting of all people. The only real exception to that would be in some of the inner city schools where you do find a great divide between races, mostly imposed but the ‘minority’ groups themselves.</p>
<p>Just want to add a little balance here. I have lived in 11 states, 2 of which are in the midwest. I would say that Chicago and Minneapolis are as “enlightened” as anywhere I have lived and the diversity/acceptance (of ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation) is spreading outward from the cites/high population areas. I do not think it has not reached everywhere (but I would argue that the same could be said of most ex-urban areas). In fact, the midwest has a very large immigrant population of both Hmong and Somali, so the stereotype of all tall, Nordic descendants is not as true as it was historically. Back to the OP: my friend’s son says the workers, like him, that have moved to ND for work are a diverse bunch in everyway except gender - they are all men!<br>
I would love to retire in Manhattan, but H won’t go for it. I think we will be here 9 months of the year and snowbird for three, finances allowing and depending on health and future grandchildren location of course. Almost every senior citizen I know here heads south for a month or longer in the winter. The cold and driving conditions are tough for everyone, esp. seniors.</p>
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<p>Thank you.</p>
<p>Donna- Fargo, ND actually is very accepting of LGBT folks. MN State Univ-Moorhead has an active population (basically Fargo). I have a friend whose gay son has been very happy and supported there. There actually IS gay life outside of NY, shockingly!</p>
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It really doesn’t matter if it’s religion, sexual orientation, or bright green hair. There would be no reason to feel unsafe. Like SteveMA mentioned, they may be curious, but would never treat either of you with any disrespect.</p>