Youtube comments of The New York Times (@nytimes).
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Op-Doc: ‘Running on Fumes in North Dakota’
Since around 2006, North Dakota’s oil boom has been a beacon for recession-ravaged Americans. The oil towns in the western part of the state are a land of possibility and opportunity, a “Kuwait on the prairie,” where the American Dream is alive and well in the rural heartland. Or at least that’s the sales pitch that has lured thousands of job seekers.
But Jonnie Cassens, a 38-year-old truck driver who is the subject of this Op-Doc video, offers a different perspective. Unable to find decent work on the West Coast, she moved to North Dakota carrying unpaid hospital bills, student loans and a commercial driver’s license. It was easy for her to get a job in the oil industry, as a contract “hotshot” truck driver — basically a round-the-clock special-delivery driver. When a rig or a pump jack breaks down, a hotshot is called to rush a new part out to a site, often in very remote areas. Jonnie calls it “U.P.S. on steroids.”
The work is steady, but her life has been agonizing. The pay can be lower than expected (her employer says she earned $34,000 last year) and the cost of living remarkably high (a tight housing market has, in some cases, inflated rents to Manhattan levels). Her loneliness is magnified by a desolate landscape that’s dominated by men.
Jonnie’s story calls into question whether hard work and courage can eventually bring a decent living in contemporary America — a longstanding promise this nation makes to its citizens. As it happens, we can’t all be winners. Not even in a boomtown.
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Music We Loved and Lost in 2013 http://nyti.ms/1i322Ym
Here’s a rewarding exercise: Assemble a playlist of songs by recently dead musicians. This list will almost certainly be random, and in the case of those who died in 2013, it could hardly be more so.
Reg Presley, of the ’60s garage band the Troggs, famous for their version of “Wild Thing,” died in February. Slim Whitman, whose career evolved from cowboy crooner to punch line, died having sold more than 70 million records. Richie Havens, whose great claim and burden was to have been first onstage at Woodstock, died in April. The list would include Eydie Gorme; the jazz trumpeter Donald Byrd; Risë Stevens, the opera singer who owned “Carmen” at the Metropolitan Opera in the ’40s and ’50s; Alan Myers, Devo’s drummer; J. J. Cale, George Jones, Bobby (Blue) Bland.
It’s not what you would call a coherent mix. But when these artists are removed from their usual context — classic rock radio, say, or the Met — surprising sounds emerge from music you thought you knew back to front. For instance: The relationship between Whitman’s high-lonesome yodel and Stevens’s vaulting mezzo is not obvious. But in the ear buds, played back to back, they make an inspired pair. Within this artificial framework, you have a chance to hear their songs as if for the first time. Read on: http://nyti.ms/1i322Ym
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