Red Lake County, Minnesota
March 25, 2016 8:04 AM   Subscribe

After calling it "the absolute worst place to live in America" this past August (MeFi discussion), Christopher Ingraham and his family are moving to Red Lake County, Minnesota.

Ingraham is looking forward to spending less than 15 hours a week commuting through the DC area. He also acknowledges that he is incredibly fortunate to be able to have an option to up stakes, move halfway across the country, and work remotely. He even claims to be looking forward to the Minnesota winter.

Also of note: "Red Lake County, Minnesota" has the same scansion as "West Covina, California". The thematic parallels are quite satisfying.
posted by Johnny Assay (69 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
When I get to Red Lake County this spring, I'll still be doing what I do now -- writing on data -- just remotely. The most important tools of my trade, after all, are a phone line and a good Internet connection.

I mean, good for him, but if you can do your job remotely, why would you spend 15 hours a week commuting to begin with? Red Lake County sounds like an excellent place to spend a summer, but I can't imagine spending a winter in rural Minnesota myself, especially with toddlers. Good luck to them.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:14 AM on March 25, 2016 [5 favorites]


As a transplant to Minnesota myself, I have to say that this place might not look like much from the outside but it's true that it can really charm you once you get here.

But yeah, being that far from the Cities in the winter would not be for me. I wish them luck exercising their hygge muscles.
posted by sparklemotion at 8:22 AM on March 25, 2016 [6 favorites]


Up until relatively recently, it wasn't a given that more remote locations would have access to a good internet connection.It looks like Red Lake County does have fiber optic broadband service, by my family who live in rural California rely on DSL, satellite or "fixed wireless."
posted by muddgirl at 8:31 AM on March 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


Read the article, the move sort of makes more sense now.
posted by ZeusHumms at 8:41 AM on March 25, 2016


WAT.

I get that milage varies, but I cannot fathom moving that far out into the boonies.

If he can work remotely, why wasn't he doing that already? And if that's an option, why not move from the tiny row house to a more distant DC exurb to preserve access to the sorts of things that rural Minnesota just isn't going to be able to provide?

Super odd choice, IMO.
posted by uberchet at 8:53 AM on March 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


Good for him
posted by JoeXIII007 at 9:10 AM on March 25, 2016


uberchet: “If he can work remotely, why wasn't he doing that already? And if that's an option, why not move from the tiny row house to a more distant DC exurb to preserve access to the sorts of things that rural Minnesota just isn't going to be able to provide?”

What are those things? What are the things that you must have within three hours' commute? Keep in mind that Red Lake County is four and a half hours from MPLS/STP, where frankly more happens on a weekend than happens in dismal DC.

Honestly aside from the Smithsonian I'm struggling to think of why this isn't a no-brainer. Minnesota is just so much more goddamned beautiful than any DC exurb in Pennsylvania or Maryland. The quality of life is higher. Stuff is cheaper. Life is just better.
posted by koeselitz at 9:12 AM on March 25, 2016 [15 favorites]


"If he can work remotely, why wasn't he doing that already?"

Where I work, it's a case-by-case basis. We used to not allow remote work at all. Then one guy's wife started grad school in Illinois (we're in Ohio), so he moved out there with her, and they let him work remotely because he's a sales guy and can still make calls remotely. Then another person's boyfriend got transferred to Louisiana, so she moved with him, and they decided she'd be allowed to work remotely too, since most of her job is writing documentation and doing conference calls. On the other hand, I can't just go to my boss and say "hey, I'm tired of driving four miles each day so I want to work remotely too because Chris and Shelly do". And we're not going to start hiring remote workers. Our general company policy doesn't allow for working remotely, but they make exceptions to the policy in order to retain top talent. It's easier to retain someone who's already providing value to your company than to pull a guy off the street, train him, and hope he works out. That's probably what's happening here.
posted by kevinbelt at 9:12 AM on March 25, 2016 [5 favorites]


It's not a permanent move:

Ingraham said he expects to live in Red Lake County with his family for about one or two years, though the length of their stay is "open-ended."

Good for him though -- I fondly remember my college days in rural Iowa.
posted by crazy with stars at 9:12 AM on March 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


Gosh, guys. I'm Mr. Urban Dweller, but I can at least understand that people actually like quiet, proximity to nature, rural neighbors, and even an intense winter. I might not do it myself, but it honestly sounds better than "a distant DC exurb" which seems to be the worst of both worlds.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 9:14 AM on March 25, 2016 [19 favorites]


"What are those things? What are the things that you must have within three hours' commute?"

Presumably things like ethnic restaurants, 24-hour stores, Ubers, drag shows, and bars with 287 different craft brews on tap that people in their 20s who live in big cities believe are absolutely essential to life, and people in middle age who live in rural areas find frivolous.
posted by kevinbelt at 9:17 AM on March 25, 2016 [12 favorites]


It may not have the fast pace of metropolitan nightlife, but it is worth noting that in rural Minnesota all the women are strong, the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.
posted by TedW at 9:30 AM on March 25, 2016 [17 favorites]


kevinbelt: “Presumably things like ethnic restaurants, 24-hour stores, Ubers, drag shows, and bars with 287 different craft brews on tap that people in their 20s who live in big cities believe are absolutely essential to life, and people in middle age who live in rural areas find frivolous.”

But none of those things exist in DC exurbs. Like I said, you have to drive / train / bus a few hours to get to them. You sincerely think having to commute three hours for those things is significantly different from driving four hours to get to Minneapolis?
posted by koeselitz at 9:38 AM on March 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


The quality of life is higher.

Quality of life is not a set thing. As a queer person who cannot drive due to a disability, who hates the cold, Minnesota's quality of life offers me nothing.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:43 AM on March 25, 2016 [14 favorites]


Yeah, that's a good point. Quality of life is pretty variable.
posted by koeselitz at 9:44 AM on March 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Presumably things like ethnic restaurants, 24-hour stores, Ubers, drag shows, and bars with 287 different craft brews on tap that people in their 20s who live in big cities believe are absolutely essential to life, and people in middle age who live in rural areas find frivolous."

I'm 46. I enjoy nearly all those things with great regularity because I don't live in the middle of nowhere. Don't assume it's just 20-somethings that like interesting food, decent shops, or bars in the category other than "dive".

Living in the orbit of an urban area also tends to ensure a more diverse general experience than living in a remote rural area. I wouldn't give that up.

Even though I'm a straight white guy, I also find rural areas very unwelcoming because, on average, they're more stridently conservative than metro areas. I'm sure that's not quite the same in a blue state like Minnesota, but one wonders about, say, attitudes about LBGTQ people even there.
posted by uberchet at 9:46 AM on March 25, 2016 [10 favorites]


Welcome, converts to the land of skytinted water. You will receive your mukluks, hot dish cookbook, and mosquito spray when you cross the border. One of us. One of us.
posted by Elly Vortex at 9:47 AM on March 25, 2016 [12 favorites]


Rural areas also tend to have less access to state of the art healthcare, which is a concern to many.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:48 AM on March 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


But none of those things exist in DC exurbs. Like I said, you have to drive / train / bus a few hours to get to them. You sincerely think having to commute three hours for those things is significantly different from driving four hours to get to Minneapolis?

I mean, Ashburn has two breweries, a distillery, and an Alamo Drafthouse now so give it five years or so, but yeah.

I've spent my whole life, apart from college in Chicago, living in DC and its suburbs, and one thing this area lacks is a sense of...self-containedness. DC is sprawl. It has always felt like the intersection of lots of satellite communities more than a singular community centered on itself. This might be different if you are from a different racial/ethnic background than me, but for me there is a certain appeal to the small-town life, just because each small town has its own very distinct community and identity. (But I love this place - quit calling it dismal! - and I'm not about to leave.)
posted by capricorn at 9:48 AM on March 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


Bet you $5 there's a book deal involved in this move. Look for a "how I found contentment in a place that is literally the worst" from this guy in a couple years.
posted by town of cats at 9:48 AM on March 25, 2016 [28 favorites]


Also, this just made me laugh out loud:

"Minnesota is just so much more goddamned beautiful than any DC exurb in Pennsylvania or Maryland. The quality of life is higher. Stuff is cheaper. Life is just better."

It suggests a wholesale unfamiliarity with Maryland west of Frederick, for one thing, and further assumes that "quality of life" is something that only a rural backwater can provide. I mean, you do you, but don't trot this out and expect it not to be challenged.

What if you value decent connectivity? Or ready availability of good beer? Or the ability to go out to eat somewhere other than a diner? What if you're not a straight white able-bodied person?
posted by uberchet at 9:49 AM on March 25, 2016 [7 favorites]


yeah, if you have any inkling about living away from major cities this is actually a really wide open landscape with a ton of lakes and parks and DQ's and ya'kno, good peeple.
posted by djseafood at 9:50 AM on March 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'll also stand by the Minnesota State Parks System as some of the best State Parks I've ever been to. I'm trying to see every one in MN.
posted by djseafood at 9:52 AM on March 25, 2016 [8 favorites]


I moved to the upper Midwest and will defend that decision with vigor, but I think that Red Lake County, MN would be too far off the beaten path for me. Also, I have a friend who grew up in rural Minnesota (a bit south of there) and doesn't describe it as being particularly hospitable to outsiders. And her family was from a different town in rural Minnesota, not from a totally different part of the country. But it'll be an interesting adventure for a couple of years, and it sounds like they can always leave if they don't like it.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 9:58 AM on March 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Re "just move to a Virginia exurb;" do you know how often people in those Viriginia exurbs make it into DC? In my experience not much. Traffic in is horrendous, local public transit options in the farthest out places are designed entirely for commuters and therefore don't exist on nights or weekends. You'd have to be pretty determined to want to go in much outside of maybe a work commute.

I'm a hardcore city person, and I broke up with a long-distance partner in Woodbridge in part because I could not conceive of ever living there, or even visiting regularly, and she had no intention of leaving. I can't drive (yet--working on it), and the idea of being in a place where I would be so dependent on another person to get absolutely anywhere freaked me the fuck out. That and the massive sprawl; it's all of the downsides of exurban and straight-up rural areas combined, without much pretty rural scenery to redeem it.

Obviously I'd have the same issue in Red Lake County, but in this author's case it seems like a good, well thought out decision.
posted by ActionPopulated at 10:21 AM on March 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


What if you value decent connectivity? Or ready availability of good beer? Or the ability to go out to eat somewhere other than a diner? What if you're not a straight white able-bodied person?

All of these things can be had in Minnesota. Maybe not Red Lake County, Minnesota, but they are here, as they are probably in every state of this Union. But these things are not priorities for all people.

Now, as for whether moving to a rural area is right for the author of this piece? IDK, he and his wife have come to this decision and seem happy with it so I wish them well. I also get that living in rural [anywhere] is not a viable (or desirable) life choice for lots of folks, and I can't see myself recommending it as a choice for anyone I actually know. But it's not like they are signing up for a life sentence or anything.

It would be different if the author wrote some kind of plug-piece for rural MN, telling everyone that it is the perfect place and they are WRONG WRONG WRONG if they don't want to live there. All he's done, as far as I can tell, is visited a place, been smitten, and decided it was right for his family for a couple of years. Good for him. On the other hand, plenty of folks here seem to be pretty happy telling the author where he should want to go.
posted by sparklemotion at 10:28 AM on March 25, 2016 [8 favorites]


Red Lake County is way up Nort der. Practically in North Dakota. If they ever decide to go to "the city" it's probably going to be Grand Forks, not Minneapolis. Which has limited options, food wise.
posted by cnelson at 10:32 AM on March 25, 2016 [8 favorites]


"All of these things can be had in Minnesota."

You quoted me out of context. I was talking about the rural backwater. Obviously, everyone knows you can get all those things in (I assume) Mpls/St Paul, e.g.
posted by uberchet at 10:36 AM on March 25, 2016


On the other hand, plenty of folks here seem to be pretty happy telling the author where he should want to go.

In fairness, I think the comment you're quoting was in part a reply to another comment that implied people naturally age out of wanting fripperies like drag shows and breweries, and partly a reply to another comment that asserted that the "quality of life" was higher in Red Lake Co. than in the DC sub/exurbs. It wasn't actually directed at the author of the piece.
posted by en forme de poire at 10:37 AM on March 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm pretty sure I'm not the one taking things out of context. Here's the full text of the comment I was replying to:

Also, this just made me laugh out loud:

"Minnesota is just so much more goddamned beautiful than any DC exurb in Pennsylvania or Maryland. The quality of life is higher. Stuff is cheaper. Life is just better."

It suggests a wholesale unfamiliarity with Maryland west of Frederick, for one thing, and further assumes that "quality of life" is something that only a rural backwater can provide. I mean, you do you, but don't trot this out and expect it not to be challenged.

What if you value decent connectivity? Or ready availability of good beer? Or the ability to go out to eat somewhere other than a diner? What if you're not a straight white able-bodied person?
posted by uberchet at 11:49 AM on March 25 [1 favorite +] [!]


The implication being that a.) Maryland west of Fredrick has "decent connectivity," "good beer," etc, and Minnesota doesn't, or (possibly a less charitable reading) that all of Minnesota is a "rural backwater." Either way, that seemed wrong enough for a call out.

And as far as "another comment that implied people naturally age out of wanting fripperies like drag shows and breweries" goes, nobody implied that people naturally age out of things. Yes, kevinbelt said that there are things that: ...people in middle age who live in rural areas find frivolous. But as you can see in this sentence fragment, it's pretty clear that the point he was making is that people who live in rural areas value different things than people who live in cities. Especially people who live in rural areas later in life (who have presumably had some choice at some point in their life to live in "the city").
posted by sparklemotion at 10:50 AM on March 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


I count myself among that woebegone 2.62 percent of workers
I see what he did there.
posted by Halloween Jack at 10:54 AM on March 25, 2016 [6 favorites]


The entire conversation, sparklemotion, is about moving not just to Minnesota generally, but to a rural backwater IN Minnesota besides. But, you know, whatever.
posted by uberchet at 11:03 AM on March 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


people in their 20s who live in big cities believe are absolutely essential to life, and people in middle age who live in rural areas find frivolous

kevinbelt explicitly brought up age, and to pretend that wasn't part of what he was implying is totally disingenuous, sorry. Also, none of what you quoted actually speaks to my point, which is that uberchet was responding to people in this thread who were arguing that quality of life in a sort of global way was better in rural MN, not to the author (who didn't do that).
posted by en forme de poire at 11:27 AM on March 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Also, it's worth noting that he mentions living in a rowhouse right now. If he's in area with enough density for rowhouses, they've probably got some city-stuff a good deal closer than the 90-minute commute to DC. It's just that that's where his office is.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 11:41 AM on March 25, 2016


I've been to Red Lake County. I've tubed down the Red Lake River. With a bunch nakid Norwegians. You'll get great reception to the Theif River Falls college radio station - one of the finest in the nation and when I was around had one of the best radio show about 'wrassling', which was so great even none wrestling fans like me could throughly enjoy it.

What Red Lake County is - it is proof that the original authors amenities data is actually just rubbish. Just the river valley is simply a lovely thing, and I come from the west coast where every valley has a river that's amazing. It winds through pastoral farmlands, there's spots to stop and swim. There's a company that rents out tubes and takes care of the logistics. It's nice. Nearby there's Red Lake and Agassiz wildlife refuge (which is thankfully an underutilized jem) but both are outside the county limits. Inside the county is propserous farms and a very twisty river.

Ingraham was an idiot to make claims and inferences about the natural emenities based on an agregated dataset. And he's not an idiot to move there, and he should write about it because places like that require more writers. More examination of the life "out there". It's a great broad place full of space, it's not an empty void.
posted by zenon at 11:45 AM on March 25, 2016 [14 favorites]


I count myself among that woebegone 2.62 percent of workers
I see what he did there.


I'm so Minnesotan I spent several minutes trying to figure out what was so special about the number 2.62 that made it a winking reference rather than just a stat from the linked article because the rest of the sentence is just words.

I get it now.
posted by Clinging to the Wreckage at 11:51 AM on March 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


As someone who lived in the Twin Cities for almost twenty years and now lives in West Bumfuck North Dakota, I feel I am quite qualified to speak on this topic, don't ya know then.

I loved life in the Cities - all those little neighborhoods with killer bakeries/coffee shops, comic book and bookstores, culture up the wazoo, my beloved Twins, etc. But there is something to be said about living in the middle of nowhere with nothing to sustain you but a fiber optic connection. I like to drive the dogs out to the family farm where they can roam the farmstead and all I hear is a meadowlark dueling it out with redwing blackbirds. At night, even in town, I can see every star in the galaxy and beyond. For every downside to rural living there sure is an upside and I can totally understand why someone with young children would embrace it.

As someone pointed out, he's not just four hours from the Twin Cities. Grand Forks is just a short drive away. Sure there's chain restaurants. Then there's placess like this. The University of North Dakota has plenty of cultural offerings besides the idiocy of Fighting Sioux hockey fans.

If Ingraham and his family head east on US 2 they'll end up in Duluth, with even more breweries, restaurants, and that glorious glorious lake. There's the BWCA, Red Lake itself, the Mississippi headwaters...

If they head west and north for a long weekend, there's Winnipeg which has a ridiculous amount of ethnic restaurants and a chance to whip out that passport.

Health care doesn't suck but you do need to travel. My wife and I are both approaching our sixties and I think that at some point we'll be doing the same as the generation above us, moving to Bismarck or Minot just to be closer to bigger and better medical facilities, and the convenience of not having to drive one or two hundred miles for a supply run.

I welcome the Ingrahams to the rural life. It sure as hell isn't for everyone. We know the LGBT community 'round here and while they don't have to be closeted anymore it's still no picnic. And public transportation simply does not exist. The winters can be brutal but the locals can show you how to survive and thrive through them. And hotdish is a wonderful meal. You betcha.
posted by Ber at 12:02 PM on March 25, 2016 [21 favorites]


kevinbelt explicitly brought up age, and to pretend that wasn't part of what he was implying is totally disingenuous, sorry.
kevinbelt brought up age, and location, together, in the same phrase. To pull out one is what's really disingenuous, especially since kevinbelt was saying just boils down to "different strokes for different folks" which should be the least controversial statement in this thread.

Also, none of what you quoted actually speaks to my point, which is that uberchet was responding to people in this thread who were arguing that quality of life in a sort of global way was better in rural MN, not to the author (who didn't do that).

It's not a super long thread, so I reread it. I count one person who stated that quality of life is better in MN*. That same person later stated that "quality of life is pretty variable," and did so before the comment that I replied to where uberchet started listing off all the ways that "rural backwaters" are horrible and depriving.

*I think there's something to be discussed here about whether we are comparing "the sticks" to "downtown," or whether we are comparing "rural area that is 4 hours from big city amenities" to "exurban area that is 3 hours from big city amenities," because I think it's confusion on that point that is leading to a lot of the misunderstanding here.
posted by sparklemotion at 12:04 PM on March 25, 2016


If they ever decide to go to "the city" it's probably going to be Grand Forks, not Minneapolis. Which has limited options, food wise.

But, there's also a good thai restaurant, good mexican, German-American, fancy shmancy artsy food, cajun...and that's just what I could remember or find until I got bored. Grand Forks is a pretty bustling city; Fargo is maybe two hours away from Red Lake with equal (if not better) facilities, and both cities have East Grand Forks and Moorhead, respectively, right across the river on the Minnesota side. Yeah, Minneapolis will have more choices, but he's not out in the middle of nowhere. If you need dozens of thai or cajun or fancy-shmancy choices to pick from at any time, that's not available out here.

But, then again I've never really lived in a truly metro area -- our quarter-million-residents-Fargo-Moorhead-Metro-Area probably doesn't even register to someone used to D.C., so I guess I don't know what I'm missing. I've been angling to find a house in a town of 10,000 people or less for quite a while now. There's an appeal to the small.
posted by AzraelBrown at 12:26 PM on March 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


Thank you, yes: DULUTH. Grand Forks isn't awful but Duluth is awesome.

This guy will go native, and when forces to return to DC, will react like Tarzan when he first visits London.
posted by wenestvedt at 1:01 PM on March 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


"kevinbelt was saying just boils down to 'different strokes for different folks'"

That's a pretty accurate restatement of my position.

"kevinbelt explicitly brought up age, and to pretend that wasn't part of what he was implying is totally disingenuous"

I mean, yeah, I mentioned ages, but that wasn't really my point. Obviously, there are 45-year-olds (or older) who live in cities and drink craft beer and eat Thai food, and there are twentysomethings who live in the middle of nowhere. I suspect there's probably a correlation between those things, but regardless, it misses the larger point. I'll try again: people who live in cities and eat at ethnic restaurants and take Ubers often, etc. etc. think it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to live without them. And the people do live without them, don't seem to miss them, and some, in fact, see the absence of such things as a feature of rural life, not a bug.

I'm not making a value judgment. In the abstract, I lean toward the latter, and yet I myself live in a neighborhood almost entirely composed of recent college graduates in a pretty large city. I like where I live, enough to have lived there since I was in college myself fourteen years ago. But I don't pretend that it would be impossible to live anywhere else, or that the types of places in my neighborhood are necessary to live a normal life.
posted by kevinbelt at 1:02 PM on March 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


uberchet: “It suggests a wholesale unfamiliarity with Maryland west of Frederick, for one thing, and further assumes that "quality of life" is something that only a rural backwater can provide. I mean, you do you, but don't trot this out and expect it not to be challenged. What if you value decent connectivity? Or ready availability of good beer? Or the ability to go out to eat somewhere other than a diner? What if you're not a straight white able-bodied person?”

Look, I'm willing to cop to my first comment here being a bit overboard in saying that life is just flatly better in Minnesota than in the environs of Washington, DC. I'd much rather live in Minnesota, given the choice between the two places, but that's neither here nor there.

What I was really responding to was your bewilderment, in your first comment here, at the fact that anyone would ever live that far out. And, yes, you did express it in those absolute terms. You made it sound like anyone who made that choice must be kind of nuts.

And, honestly, that suggested to me a "wholesale unfamiliarity" with what you have consistently (and - I'm sorry - sort of obnoxiously) have termed "rural backwaters" here. I grew up in a small town of 6000 in Colorado, and the beer selection was exceedingly good there; there were Thai, Chinese, Mexican, and New Mexican restaurants; there were 24-hour places (while, I'll note, there were exactly zero 24-hour stores in Boston when I lived there) – in general, everything was available, and that's even more true now in the age of Amazon and fast internet everywhere. You mention "decent connectivity," which suggests to me that you don't know much about how internet speeds have changed in the United States in the past decade; I've had better connection speeds in rural locales than in cities over the past few years – with a few exceptions (Alaska, I think?) many if not most rural locales in the United States already have pretty good internet.

In short: I just think maybe people have reasons to live where they want to live. It's not a horrible mistake to live in rural Minnesota, if you want. And it's not necessarily terrible for people who are similar to you; you can get plenty of good beer in rural Minnesota, I'd warrant, and some interesting music, and some interesting people and things to do.
posted by koeselitz at 1:07 PM on March 25, 2016 [6 favorites]


with a few exceptions (Alaska, I think?) many if not most rural locales in the United States already have pretty good internet.
I don't think that's true, for what it's worth. At least, rural internet access is a political issue in my state. There was a bill that passed last year to expand high speed internet access, and things are getting better, but as of last June, about 50% of the territory in my state had access to high-speed internet. The goal is 100% by 2025.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:18 PM on March 25, 2016 [6 favorites]


Yeah, that might just be the rural locales I've lived in and am familiar with. I can imagine it varies. That sort of goes to the point, though, I think; internet connectivity varies everywhere, and it's not just a simple thing where, if you want connectivity, you must avoid any rural area.
posted by koeselitz at 1:27 PM on March 25, 2016


"your bewilderment, in your first comment here, at the fact that anyone would ever live that far out."

Was it the bewilderment and absolute terms in the comment that literally began with "I get that milage varies"? Huh.

Trust me, I know from rural backwaters. I'm from Mississippi. I have family in places that think a population of 6,000 is a metropolis.

"that's even more true now in the age of Amazon and fast internet everywhere."

The notion that fast internet is available anywhere is completely and totally wrong. Reasonable connectivity in 2016 is > 10-15Mbps. You don't get that from DSL, and you don't get better than DSL when the population density is at "deep rural" levels. Ask our own Scalzi, who lives in rural Ohio, about his connectivity options.

Red Lake County fares pretty poorly on this survey, if you want to get specific about it.

This is actually a huge policy problem for the US; there's a digital divide between cities, which typically have great connectivity options broadly available, and rural areas that don't. People worry about how this affects information availability for children growing up. It's not a solved problem by any means, regardless of what personal experience you've had.
posted by uberchet at 1:27 PM on March 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


sparklemotion: Again, the specific comment of yours I was responding to was: "On the other hand, plenty of folks here seem to be pretty happy telling the author where he should want to go." My original point was that actually, the specific comment you quoted was not telling the author where he should want to go, because it was not actually directed at him, but at another commenter in the thread. Looking back over the thread, I certainly don't see the "plenty of folks" you're talking about; the only commenter who really took a critical stance was uberchet. I agree that "rural backwater" is an obnoxious turn of phrase, but the vast majority of comments have been pretty measured or positive.

Also thanks to kevinbelt for clarifying his intent. I still don't really agree with that characterization, though. For one thing, there are rural areas with off-the-beaten-track food and drag shows and microbrews, as well as large American cities where those things are in short supply. But also, there are a lot of deeper non-lulzy reasons for people to seek density, and to seek specific dense places (access to job networks in case of unemployment, access to specialized medical care, seeking community or even safety as part of a minority, proximity to transit hubs, proximity to existing social networks...). People who jokingly talk about how they couldn't live without Thai food are being provincial, I agree, but I also don't really believe that's at the root of why most people (or even those people tbh) choose an urban vs. a rural lifestyle.
posted by en forme de poire at 1:54 PM on March 25, 2016


Again, the specific comment of yours I was responding to was: "On the other hand, plenty of folks here seem to be pretty happy telling the author where he should want to go."

TIFU by reading a bunch of comments by one user and extrapolating that out to "plenty of folks" and also by quoting only one comment by that user while responding to multiple comments by that user. Both of errors in my original comment contributed to the lack of clarity going on in this thread, but I don't think that they affect the substance or my interpretation of what anyone has actually said in this thread, taken as a whole.

I do think that this: "If he can work remotely, why wasn't he doing that already? And if that's an option, why not move from the tiny row house to a more distant DC exurb to preserve access to the sorts of things that rural Minnesota just isn't going to be able to provide?" does rise to the level of "telling the author where he should want to go."
posted by sparklemotion at 2:31 PM on March 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


Too close to Wisconsin.
posted by notreally at 3:21 PM on March 25, 2016 [3 favorites]


Pfft, let's REALLY shift this Overon window: living in MN is better than anywhere east of the Appalachians. So there.

(Psssst, sparklemotion, take cover behind me!!)
posted by wenestvedt at 3:57 PM on March 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


Also, freshwater fish tastes better than saltwater fish; smelt > soft-shell crab.

And proximity to nature beats proximity to power.
posted by wenestvedt at 5:00 PM on March 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Life is just better colder.

I'm fine with rural living (though as mentioned above the lack of local access to specialized healthcare is a real problem) but I would not be fine with the winters up there.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:11 PM on March 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Man, it is SO HARD to find a decent beer in this state.
posted by jillithd at 6:14 PM on March 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


I wouldn’t want to live in the middle of nowhere, but the "cities have things, rural areas don’t" argument isn’t that cut and dried for me. I noticed that the bigger the city I lived in the less I actually engaged with it due to traffic and general hassle. Sure there’s a honeymoon period, but after a while it all becomes to much hassle. I realized at some point that I could be living anywhere if I wasn’t going to actually go to the trouble of getting out of the house.
posted by bongo_x at 10:32 PM on March 25, 2016 [4 favorites]


My grandfather was born in Northfield 15 years after Jesse James came to town.

Yup.

The family traded produce and dairy products for college tuition at St. Olafs.
I lived in lower for 3 looonnnggggg months.

Yup.
posted by clavdivs at 11:48 PM on March 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


As hard-core a city person as I am, I'd rather live out in the middle of beautiful nowhere than in some charmless lifeless suburb. Nighttime there feels like actual death to me.

Kind of staggered that anyone still calls them "ethnic restaurants," though. Really?
posted by praemunire at 11:59 PM on March 25, 2016 [2 favorites]


Quality of life is not a set thing.

Indeed it is not. In fact, what constitutes a "good" quality of life not only varies from person to person; even such a judgment as I might define it for myself is liable to be different a decade from now, or a year from now (or, hell, possibly even tomorrow afternoon) than it is now.

That said, I wish Ingraham and his family the best of luck and hope they find what they're looking for there in the north country.
posted by non canadian guy at 12:23 AM on March 26, 2016 [3 favorites]


I'm pretty sure he was looking for a landlocked county that borders just 2 other counties and Red Lake just happened to fit the bill. You people are overthinking this.
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 5:27 AM on March 26, 2016 [4 favorites]


Those slamming DC are coming across as ignorant jerks. Your place of residence is not improved by taking shit about someone else's.
posted by humanfont at 6:46 AM on March 26, 2016 [2 favorites]


I am from Minnesota. I haven't lived there in thirteen years. It's a nice place in many ways. I wish him the best; and I hope that he'll find a network of friends and neighbors that continues after their specific courtship of him dies down. My parents, who have lived in my small hometown for thirty years, are still not as comfortable there as they were in the small MN town where they grew up, and have far fewer friends in Second Town (and almost all of those are "transplants"). A giant part of our social interaction in Second Town was with one distant third cousin who had been socially isolated since coming to Second Town in the 50s as a new bride, and was overjoyed to finally have clan members in town.

But little towns each have their own personality. Some are probably less Wisconsin Death Trip than others.

Also

we began talking of raising them -- at least for a time, before they start school -- out in the country

there is no possible way anyone who writes for a national magazine is going to send their kids to a small rural public school.

Since the kids aren't in school yet, I hope to god his wife can join about thirteen clubs and church groups and library story hours or she will be stuck with two tiny children miles out of town.
posted by Hypatia at 7:42 AM on March 26, 2016 [3 favorites]


I've been thinking about this a lot. When I finally get sick of the rat race, I'm gonna pack up the wife and kids drop a homestead way, way up north. Maybe north of The Wall. There's a lot of natural beauty there and according to my friend Jon, Wildlings can be quite welcoming once you get to know them. Yeah, specialty medical care can be hard to come by, but I'm sure they've got ale. I'd like to have some more kids up there. With 2 boys now I'd like to try for a girl, maybe more than one. Yeah, lots and lots of baby girls living with me up in my cabin north of The Wall. I'm thinking this is a good time of year to do this, I'd hate to move up there with winter coming.



Come to think of it, it's been a while since I've heard from my friend Jon...
posted by Slarty Bartfast at 10:09 AM on March 26, 2016 [4 favorites]


I'm fairly certain that the absolute worst place to live in America can be found in Philadelphia. Or perhaps Shamokin Pa.
posted by evilDoug at 10:47 AM on March 26, 2016


"there are rural areas with off-the-beaten-track food and drag shows and microbrews, as well as large American cities where those things are in short supply"

Absolutely, which is one of the reasons I think the "he's crazy for doing this" people are off the mark. One of the great things about my job is that I get to travel to various middle-of-nowhere places, and I never eat as well as I do in those types of places. The main difference is quantity. Cities general have more, but in my personal experience, I tend to frequent the same five or so restaurants in my large city anyway, so it wouldn't be that much of a change.

It should be noted that others in this thread have disparaged rural dining options, e.g. "the ability to go out to eat somewhere other than a diner".

"access to specialized medical care"

This has come up a few times in this thread, and maybe I'm just privileged to be healthy, but how much of a concern is this? I've only known a couple of people under the age of 60 who have needed care so specialized that it couldn't be provided by a general hospital/emergency room or urgent care. Incidentally, one of those people lives in the same large city I do (population ~2m), and the care they needed was not available in our city, so they had to drive 100 miles every week or so for a few months to a hospital that could provide they care they needed. I know this is only one data point, but my point is that city size is not a reliable proxy for access to care.

"thanks to kevinbelt for clarifying his intent"

I may sometimes be wrong, but I try not to be unreasonable.
posted by kevinbelt at 8:02 AM on March 28, 2016 [1 favorite]


For specialized medical care, two things I'd personally be looking for would be LGBT-competent primary care and multiple options for mental health care. (I know oncology is another arena where rural areas are often less well-served.) Again, I'm not saying it's binary; all these things definitely exist in rural areas and not all dense areas are equally well-served. When you also factor in the vagaries of which insurance covers which providers, though, having local density and some amount of choice in providers can be really helpful.
posted by en forme de poire at 10:49 AM on March 28, 2016


I think trauma care is a big one, and most people bet on never needing expert trauma care.

My dad had a commonplace domestic accident that left him blind in one eye. My mother drove him 3.5 hours to the nearest hospital with opthamology specialists after he was stabilized at their local medical center (medical transport was too expensive, I guess). I don't know if being closer to a big hospital would have saved his sight, though. There are a lot of unknowns in this world.
posted by muddgirl at 11:53 AM on March 28, 2016


This has come up a few times in this thread, and maybe I'm just privileged to be healthy, but how much of a concern is this? I've only known a couple of people under the age of 60 who have needed care so specialized that it couldn't be provided by a general hospital/emergency room or urgent care.

It's not a big deal at all, right up until the minute you do need a specialist or the new fancy technology. One thing to remember is that you probably don't know as many medical details of your friends as you might think you do -- medical stuff can be embarrassing and complicated, and people often keep it private. As people age, issues start popping up, and people who were the picture of health in their twenties and thirties can find their forties to be rather different, and each decade past that more so.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:35 PM on March 28, 2016


My aunt was an RN at a regional medical center in northern MN; one of her daughters manages all the nurses at a good-size hospital in the suburbs of the Twin Cities; another daughter is, I believe, also a nurse in the Cities. For crying out loud, the Mayo Clinic is in a third-tier city in southern Minnesota, and the U of M has an amazing teaching hospital.

There are enough major medical centers scattered around the state -- and the services at local hospitals can usually stabilize you long enough to get you there -- that Minnesotans (and, BTW, people in other flyover states) are not being felled by accident left and right. You get stabilized, you get airlifted to Minneapolis or St. Cloud or Duluth or Fargo or Rochester, you get excellent care.

Look, almost 30 years ago, my uncle had a terrible accident: he was working on top of an 80-foot tall piece of equipment at a taconite mine in northern Minnesota. It tipped over, killing every other guy with him and destroying the truck (and its radio); he was found some hours later, comprehensively mangled. (He said, "It's the only time I've been able to read the sole of my boot while I was wearing it.") He got years of surgeries, and had a shopping cart worth of steel in his body for a long time. They saved his life, saved his limbs, and (too many years later) finally did yet another surgery in order to restore full range of motion in his wrists.

He was found at the bottom of an open pit mine broken and bleeding, and now in his retirement he builds beautiful guitars: Minnesota life isn't a death sentence.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:00 AM on March 29, 2016 [4 favorites]


wenestvedt - I hope that wasn't addressed to me? I grew up in rural California and my family still lives there. A question was asked, and I gave an answer based on a personal story. The trauma care at my parent's local hospital was not the same tier as in the big city 3 hours away. That's a fact. That doesn't mean I hate rural life or think that all the people who live in my hometown are all going to die due to lack of top-tier medical care.
posted by muddgirl at 1:21 PM on March 29, 2016 [2 favorites]


I do think that winters in that part of MN are about an order of magnitude harder than they are here in Mpls, and they're already plenty hard here. Positives have a good chance of outweighing negatives for him from March through November, but he and his family will be staring into the abyss in February.
posted by the phlegmatic king at 1:32 PM on March 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh, muddgirl, not at all! :7)

I agree that there are always unknowns: heck, I am amazed that my uncle lived, having seen him in his wheelchair a few months later. (They were living in a small, two-story house around the corner form where Bob Dylan grew up in Hibbing, MN. My young cousin was upstairs and, as he had done so many times before, my uncle -- unable to walk, with steel cages emerging from both arms and both legs, and ohmygodwherearen'tyouinahospitalbed -- yells, "Bridget! Don't make me come up there!" After a beat, she replied, "You can't come up here." And he just gave me A Look. I thought I would bust an eardrum trying to smother the laughter -- which he joined in. He's a good guy.)

ANYway, that was just a reaction to a sentiment I get a lot -- even on MeFi -- about how the world revolves around the major coastal cities and the center of the continent (as well as second-tier cities) are a yawning desert. It bugs me, and often comes out sideways, sometimes surprising or offending people who aren't its target. I apologize if that happened again: it was not at all my intent.

Living out in the boonies is, these days, a weird combination of 21st Centiry and 19th Century. I was just reading a book about my dad's forebears settling on a farm in western Minnesota in the mid1800s, and I was surprised to read about things (freak storms) that still can't be adequately handled, more than a century later! But they also have GPS-guided combine harvesters, and truck jacks at silos that can tilt a 40-footer full of sugar beets right up into the air!
posted by wenestvedt at 1:43 PM on March 29, 2016


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