Whether the Weather

I continue to be amazed at the weather here.
It has snowed everyday (not hard but today it is a pleasant falling snow, pleasant if you take away the 25 mph winds coming from the west, so if I'm standing on the east side of a building then yes, it is pleasant) but there is no noticeable accumulation of snow anywhere.
In about 15 minutes I'll walk over to the discount bakery place and try to buy some dollar bread (or if it is a lucky day, some bagels and raisin bread, ummm') and the during my walk I go on the bridge that spans the huge railyard on the south side of campus (seriously, it is pretty big and one of those places where they store railcars when not in use, but there is also a big substation here). The reason I mention this, is that when I'm at the highpoint of the bridge, I'm in one of the highest places in town and it is a place where I can feel the wind blow, the bridge shake when a bunch of cars go by and if the train is moving below, whoa, it seems like the bridge could go down any minute. Needless to say, I'll stand there for a few moments and look around. You can see about 15-20 miles to the west, downtown to the east, the university to my immediate north and the health complex and golf course to the south. During the right part of the day (usually for me sunset) or in a light breeze or snowfall it seems nice and GF seems like the place to be. It is also the place where I have almost been hit by bicyclists. So memories can go either way.


Last week I attended one day of the North Dakota High School Football Championships. This team (the Hillsboro Burros, only 30 minutes from GF) beat Williams County from the west end of the state in the 9-man final. What was fascinating to was the history of Williams County. Ten years ago, the two towns of Ray and Tiago had two separate class-A teams. Six years ago they decided to form one class-A football team. Three years they downsized from class-A to 9-man. We had heard on the bus tour we did at the beginning of the semester that many towns were in danger of losing their school systems. Previous towns that lost their school systems had started to disappear as towns and now townships and communities are putting up fights to stop the state from closing their school systems and sending their kids to other schools. Grand Forks has experienced zero population growth since 1990. Many parts of the state are experiencing population declines and despite the fact of gas discoveries on many western counties, these counties are not experiencing growth (single people move in, work the gas exploration or gas drilling, then leave or move with the exploration, the only people making permanent money off gas exploration and drilling are the land owners and the state, people who run hotels, diners & shops make a bunch of money for a limited time).
The communities of Ray, Tiago & the rest of Williams County came out on en mass. While the game was over by the end of the first quarter (Hillsboro was up 22-0 and driving for another score and WC had only got one first down) the crowd stayed positive and cheered like they won the game when the Firestorm finally scored in the fourth quarter. You could just feel like this was an important event and that the towns had shut down, came east and were going to have a good time (although, like the communities the team serves the result of the game came up like the lands and people who cheered for them, they were destroyed and left with memories).
It was an interesting story to see.