Trending Thursday: Top 10 ….. er, 11 Tweets for 11-11-11

 

This day comes just once in a century, so for the 21st Century, here are my Top 10,  er, 11 Tweets on 11-11-11 as seen trending on Twitter:

11. It’s 11-11-11 What are you wishing for?

10. 11-11-11 Comes just once every 100 years. This is probably the first and last one you’ll see. Enjoy it!

9. 11-11-11 A great day to follow up on those goals and dreams you always planned on achieving

8. 11-11-11 I’m scared of tiny spiders, but not the end of the world

7. 11-11-11 Number 11 means incompleteness, disorganization, disintegration. Also lawlessness, disorder !!

6. 11-11-11 Next year we’ll have 12/12/12. Big deal! What would be awesome is if we could have 13/13/13

5. 11-11-11 Did you know that if you add your age and the last two numbers of hte year you were born it equals 11?

4. 11-11-11 1. Wish 1. Purpose 1. Person 1. Heart 1. Feeling 1. Word “YOU”

3. 11-11-11 Who said 1 is the loneliest number? I see a bunch of them up there.

2. 11-11-11 Maybe I’ll fall in love, or win the lottery or get a good deal on a new purse

And my choice for the top tweet trending on Twitter:

1. 11-11-11 Make the day worth remembering!

Media Monday: Newspapers and Communities Cope with the Weight of the North Dakota Oil Boom

By Teri Saylor

Editor’s Note:  This is second in a series of four stories about newspapers serving their communities in the Bakken Oil Field of northeastern North Dakota, where an oil rush is creating extravagant population growth and an (almost) out of control economic boom. While writing for the National Newspaper Association’s Publishers Auxiliary, I spoke with the publishers at four newspapers. Here are their stories:

 

As I reported last week, North Dakota is booming thanks to a horn a plenty of oil in its northwest corner.

Roger Bailey, executive director of the North Dakota Newspaper Association reported that unemployment is around 3 percent statewide. The state coffers are groaning under a $1 billion surplus.

But expenses are going up.

“Expenditures for the state will be rising dramatically in the areas of infrastructure, mostly for deteriorating roads and increased law enforcement,” Bailey said. “A special session of the state legislature will be held in November to address these issues. Nobody really understood how much of an effect this was going to have on the state and its people. Only now are we getting a firm hand on the situation.”

People traveling out west to seek jobs and better lives should take their own housing with them. There are not enough available places to live for the scores of new workers in the area, and the housing that is available is offered at astronomical prices.

The Bakken oil field is a shale formation spanning 14,000 square miles in North Dakota, Montana and Canada.

Television journalist Harry Smith has been reporting from Williston, ND on this story for the new NBC show “Rock Central.”

Here’s the Williston story from the local newspaper publisher, Mitzi Moe.

MITZI MOE, PUBLISHER, WILLISTON HERALD

Williston is bursting at the seams.

“There are tent cities springing up and campers all over the place,” says Mitzi Moe, publisher of the Williston Herald. “Rents are also exploding. Apartments that rented for $700 went up to $1,000 last year, and this year they are at $2,000.”

People are living in tents, in campers and in residents’ basements. They also are renting rooms and living in housing developments called “man camps” located on the outskirts of the small towns around the oil field.

“Hiring people is next to impossible,” Moe said. “We are running short of staff in every department: news, advertising and circulation.”

Moe, herself, was working the front desk during a conversation with a reporter.

“It has been an experience,” she admits. “I am learning customer service all over again, and learning what my staff goes through day to day. Everyone is pitching in too. Our circulation director is helping to sell ads. Our classified advertising people are taking on accounts. There is so much involved; we’re taking it day to day.”

Moe, who has lived near Dallas, TX, compares the jammed roadways around Williston to Dallas metro traffic.

“We’re not prepared for this. We don’t have the infrastructure,” she says. “Williston is a tiny little town. We have one Walmart, two small home improvement stores, a JC Penney. Yet in the second quarter of the year, we beat Fargo (ND) in sales tax collections.”

In 2009, Williams County issued 447 building permits. In 2011 so far, the county has issued nearly 2,000. Mobile home permits have doubled in the past few years, from 627 in 2009 to 1,108 in 2011, according to Moe.

“Our advertising has increased tremendously,” she said. “Our help wanted classified display ads are generating dollars comparable to our display dollars.”

The Williston Herald is a six-day-a-week newspaper, owned by Wick Communications. In a normal week, the newspaper published two sections just two or three days a week. Now the newspaper has two sections every day.

Moe also publishes a weekly TMC publication and has started a new monthly magazine about the oil industry called “Talkin’ the Bakken.”

The four-color, glossy magazine contained 18-24 pages when it first came out.

“Today we are averaging 80 pages monthly,” Moe said. “Our September 2011 issue had 104 pages. October will have 80 pages.”

Her newspaper employees produce the magazine, in addition to their daily newspaper duties, with no extra help or staffing.

“There’s no extra staff to be had,” Moe said. “Our folks are doing an excellent job.”

Moe’s next frontier is to serve the man camps.

“The camps are very nice, sort of like barracks, and each resident has his own room,” she said. “I have been looking for ways to service them with newspapers.”

She and her staff have reported on these camps, running regular features on the men who live there.

While her job has become stressful, it is not without its rewards.

“There is so much going on now,” Moe says. “I am lucky to have a wonderful managing editor, who does a great job with our staff, and I love to see the excitement in young journalists’ faces when they have an opportunity to cover so much breaking news.”

Out and About: Disappearing into South Carolina’s Bermuda Triangle of BBQ

Jackie Hite's in Batesburg, SC could very well be the Bermuda Triangle of BBQ, where you wish you could disappear, never to resurface

My friend Bill Rogers knows his barbecue.

As a certified barbecue judge down in South Carolina, he was my go-to guy for great Q when I visited him at the South Carolina Press Association in Columbia, where he works as executive director.

Face it, when you are friends with a real-life, card-carrying South Carolina barbecue judge, you gotta go with him to get some Q.

I grew up in North Carolina eating the red-sauced barbecue in the western Piedmont region. After migrating east, I learned to love vinegar-and-pepper Q from places like Simp’s in Roper, Wilber’s in Goldsboro, and King’s in Kinston.

But never in my life have I eaten as much barbecue in one sitting as I ate last week when Bill took me to Jackie Hite’s Barbecue in Batesburg, SC.

Getting full was no excuse to stop eating.

You see, Friday is pig-pickin’ day at Jackie Hite’s.

‘Nuff said.

The End.

Not really.

On pig pickin’ day, Jackie Hite goes whole hog.  Literally.

He lays out the meat of an entire pig under glowing heat lamps with the same care and pride a jeweler lays out the glittering gems of his trade.

A diner helps himself to a heaping plateful at Jackie Hite's

The cooking staff recites a litany of what you get on the bottomless buffet, and are happy to repeat it as often as needed.

“You got your string meat here,” a well-seasoned server points a gloved finger in the middle of the pile. “Here’s the rib meat. Here’s the shoulder. Skins are on the ends.”

Friday is pig pickin' day at Jackie Hite's and the serving staff are happy to recite a litany of the delicious meats on the buffet

No need to be picky. Bill piles heaping portions of each steaming section on my plate.

Beyond the hog are the sides and desserts: string beans with flavorful chunks of fresh brown bacon fully visible among the vegetables; creamy mashed potatoes; gravy, rice; baked beans; curried fruit; mayo-based slaw; chopped barbecue and fried chicken. And barbecue hash. And banana pudding.

The salad bar seems oddly out of place.

Jackie Hite’s Barbecue is one of a handful of South Carolina’s 100-mile barbecue joints. “I’d drive 100 miles to eat this barbecue.”

I actually drove 233 miles, to Columbia, and Bill drove the rest of the way to Jackie Hite’s.

We found ourselves in the heart of South Carolina’s mustard belt, named for the tangy yellow sauce used to flavor the barbecue in that region.

Jackie Hite reckons he’s been cooking barbecue for over 50 years, if you count the early days he spent helping out around the family business when he was just a kid.

“I believe I started helping my daddy when I was about 10 years old,” Hite says, holding court during lunch hour in his top rated joint.

The owner and author at Jackie Hite's BBQ

He’s learned his lessons well, and still cooks his hog the old fashioned way, as slow as possible over a wood fire burning in a sand pit at temperatures so low that cardboard laid over the grill doesn’t catch fire. Meat simmering for hours is treated with gobs of mustard/vinegar sauce for tenderizing and flavoring.

Jack Hitt, writing for the New York Times Magazine, called the area of South Carolina, north from Charleston to Columbia, the “Devil’s Triangle” of barbecue.

That’s where Jackie Hite’s sits, and it is where you might sell your soul to the very devil himself in exchange for barbecue.

Or you could call it the Bermuda Triangle, where you can disappear into its delicious vortex, never to resurface.

“There, the sauce is based on mustard, not tomatoes, and vinegar, not brown sugar, is the dominant back-taste,” Hitt wrote.

I know for a fact that in North Carolina, barbecue fanatics have gotten into fist fights over red sauce vs. vinegar sauce. I can only imagine the wars that break out in a state where there are four different sauces.

In addition to mustard-based Q sauce, you can get thick red sauce, vinegar sauce, and light red sauce in South Carolina.

Jackie Hite, in a show of diplomacy that would qualify him to be Secretary of State and has probably prevented all out wars among the barbecue regions, displays all four kinds of sauce on his buffet. He helpfully points out the vinegar as a way to make me feel more at home, and even brings a bottle of it over to our table.

The Q was so delicious and tender, it needed no sauce at all.

I gluttonized myself and ate two plates full.

And drank four large cups of sweet iced tea.

I was not hungry again for two entire days.

Jackie Hite’s staff has been with him for years. They are part of the ambiance of the place, a nondescript little white building decorated on the inside with trophies from Jackie’s life.

The joint is plain and spotlessly clean. Diners are as comfortable there as they are in their own kitchens. Even visitors who have never been to Batesburg before will feel right at home, as if they have been eating there forever.

Jackie Hite's is plain and spotlessly clean.

Everyone is family at Jackie Hite’s.

Jackie Hite himself is tall, broad and brawny from years playing football, years spent outside and years eating barbecue. He wears a ball cap emblazoned with the BL logo of his beloved Batesburg-Leesville high School where he earned trophies playing under the lights on Fridays. Those trophies, photos and plaques too, adorn the walls and perch on his buffet counter.

He’s still an avid football fan and fisherman.

Mounted bass with mouths gaping wide, join dozens of photos of Jackie and little kids proudly displaying their catches. Some of the photos are curled from light and sun after years of hanging on those walls. Kids smiling out from those photos are likely now grown and fishing with their own sons and daughters.

Jackie reckons he goes fishing four times a week at least, in between running his restaurant and going to football games.

The lunchtime crowd lines up on pig pickin day at Jackie Hite's

Midway through the lunch hour, the entire joint shakes and rattles as a train rumbles along tracks that go straight through the middle of town, just feet from the front door.

Conversation pauses while the train passes through.

Finally, Bill and I have eaten enough barbecue and have drunk enough tea, and we clamber out of the place.

I glance back inside the restaurant as we walk out the door. Our table is already clean, and a new diner is settling in with a heaping plate.

Back in Columbia, Bill and I struggle to hug each other before parting ways, but our swollen bellies get in the way. We are almost too full to even laugh about that.

I’m not sure when I will be hungry enough to feed from Jackie Hite’s trough again, but it doesn’t matter.

I’m going back.

There’s always room for barbecue.

Bill Rogers is a certified, card-carrying BBQ judge in South Carolina

Trending Tuesday: Top 10 Trending Tweets – Things Lasting Longer than Kim’s Marriage

The Twitterverse is all a-twitter over the “shocking” break-up of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries after 72 days of marriage.  #ThingsLongerThanKimsMarriage is at the top of the trending list.

Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries at their wedding, 72 days before Kim files for divorce. Photo by StarTraksPhoto

Here are my The marriage break up between Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries trended for days. Here are my top 10 tweets #ThingsLongerThanKimsMarriage:

10.  A laptop battery (@STFU_Reese)

9.  Snooki’s legs (@mistacoopa)

8.  The time it took you to read this tweet (@EarthTolew)

7.  Taylor Swift’s speech before Kanye took the microphone (@DameFresh)

6.  The list of people who don’t care (@SJDgs)

5.  Casey Anthony’s murder trial (@ChrissieFBaby 1920)

4. The television episode that showed the wedding (@allison_beliebs)

3. Waiting in line to renew your license at the DMV (@CT_Fox)

2.  The total time of television ads for her wedding…how sad is that? (@DualSeize)

And my number 1 trending tweet about #ThingsLongerThanKimsMarriage

1. This trending topic (@RichieAudemor)

MEDIA MONDAY: Economy Booms in the North Dakota Oil Fields

By Teri Saylor

Editor’s Note:  This is first in a series of stories about newspapers serving their communities in the Bakken Oil Field of northeastern North Dakota, where an oil rush is creating extravagant population growth and an (almost) out of control economic boom. Working for the National Newspaper Association’s Publishers Auxiliary, I spoke with the publishers at four newspapers. Here is an introduction and the first installment:

 

Black gold. Liquid loot.

North Dakota is booming thanks to a horn a plenty of oil in its northwest corner.

While the nation is saturated with news of rampant home foreclosures, employee layoffs, government cutbacks, and double-digit unemployment rates, the “Peace Garden State” is bowing under an economy that has grown so fast, the area can’t to keep up.

Where newspaper classified advertising is shrinking, newspapers in the oil field are doubling their classified pages.  Where reporters, ad directors, and production staff are being laid off across the country, in North Dakota, the newspapers need more workers.

In North Dakota, around the oil fields, fast food restaurants offer $15 an hour to attract employees. Local governments are issuing building permits for new construction as fast as they can approve them.  .

Oil has been a huge shot in the arm for the State of North Dakota from a tax standpoint,” North Dakota Newspaper Association executive director Roger Bailey said. “Unemployment is virtually unknown off the Indian reservations and is in the 3 percent range statewide. The state legislature in early 2011 was dealing with a budget surplus in the area of $1 billion – with a population of 650,000.”

The Bakken Oil Field Straddles the U.S. - Canada Border

But there is a dark side.

“Expenditures for the state will be rising dramatically in the areas of infrastructure, mostly for deteriorating roads and increased law enforcement,” Bailey said. “A special session of the state legislature will be held in November to address these issues. Nobody really understood how much of an effect this was going to have on the state and its people. Only now are we getting a firm hand on the situation.”

People traveling out west to seek jobs and better lives should take their own housing with them. There are not enough available places to live for the scores of new workers in the area, and the housing that is available is offered at astronomical prices.

Accident rates have tripled. Schools are overflowing, and some people have compared the amount of traffic to volumes seen in major metropolitan areas.

Publishers Auxiliary interviewed publishers and editors at four community  newspapers located around the Bakken oil field, a shale formation spanning 14,000 square miles in North Dakota, Montana and Canada.

There are no absolute figures on the amount of oil present, but estimates range from four billion barrels to 20 billion. The controversial method of frakking horizontally deep below ground rather than past methods of drilling straight down, enables oil companies to extract large volumes for many years.

The publishers in this piece reckon the oil boom will last a long time.

STEVE ANDRIST, PUBLISHER, CROSBY JOURNAL/TIOGA TRIBUNE

Steve Andrist

“North Dakota is our domestic Saudi Arabia,” Steve Andrist says. “The oil reserves here are even more significant than earlier geographic surveys predicted.”

Over the last couple of decades, parts of the state were on the decline, according to Andrist, publisher of the Crosby Journal and the Tioga Tribune, newspapers that have been in his family for three generations.

North Dakota is a largely agricultural state, where technology has improved farming efficiency, and reducing reliance on human resources.

“This has led to a population decline,” Andrist says. “We’ve watched young people move elsewhere, because there are not many jobs here. And this has led to a loss of economy and population decline.”

What a difference a few years and a large oil reserve make.

People are returning to northwestern North Dakota. In droves.

“For the first time in 50 or 60 years, our state’s population is increasing,” Andrist says. “At first we thought we had found the answer to turn our economy around. But after a couple of years, the honeymoon ended.”

North Dakota, which makes the news each summer because of river flooding, is now flooded with oil workers, big rig trucks, manufacturing outlets, and jobs.

Local businesses, government and infrastructure can’t keep up.

“Today, anyone who wants a job can find one,” Andrist says. “Reports that unemployment is at two percent are too generous. If there is anyone here who doesn’t have a job, then something is wrong.”

The Crosby Journal and Tioga Tribune are bursting at the seams with legal notices, advertising and news.

“In the de-population days we were scrambling to find stories, and we ran a lot of features. Now we are wishing for the luxury of time so we can do more features,” Andrist says. “We are spending all of our time covering development stories: planning, zoning; water; roads. So many issues.”

Heavy trucks traveling along the rural roads have torn up the asphalt.  Housing rents are hovering between $2,000 and $3,000 per month for homes occupied by several oil workers rooming together.

“We cover more traffic related issues and crime such as bar fights and personal assaults,” Andrist says. “Our health care system is struggling to keep up with the demand, as well as handling injuries caused by oil rig accidents that they have never seen before.

On the advertising side, Andrist has seen an uptick in legal notices and classified advertising.

“We have always had a very small classified advertising section, just one page, which was a joint section shared by our two newspapers. Now we are at two pages of classifieds every week,” he says. “We have public notices published because of zoning and annexation hearings we never used to have.”

Andrist has  had to go up two pages overall in his newspaper, and advertisers are requesting more color, “which we really like,” he says.

“I feel kind of self-conscious when I go to NNA meetings and talk with publishers cutting budgets and laying off people,” Andrist said. “For us, the last two or three years has been our best ever in this business.”

Asnowcalypse in Raleigh

An almost white Christmas in Raleigh made a popular Christmas carol come true!

Sleighbells ring; are ya listenin’

In the lane, snow is glistenin’

A beautiful sight; we’re happy tonight

Walkin’ in a winter wonderland

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas Eve at Oakwood Cemetery: Little Altars

Touching and poignant, loved ones at rest in Oakwood Cemetery are remembered at Christmas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

View From a Beach Chair July 4, 2010

Over the 2010 Fourth of July Holiday, the beach outside the Windjammer Inn at Salter Path Beach near Morehead City was teeming with life.  Throughout the day, the beach unfolded like a theatre production, and here’s the show from my beach chair.

 

This guy on the beach …

 

Classic

 

 

It was inevitable

   

There was dog walking

Dog surfing

Kids love the surfing puppy

Coming in for a landing

Washed ashore

A good dunking

 

A ride with a view

He's baack!

       

      

    

Bird Fight

Bird Flight

Colorful Umbrellas

No Vacancy!

The View from Sally’s Asylum

The 2010 Umstead 100-mile Endurance Run has come and gone. But the remnants and memories endure.  On one weekend each year, near the first weekend of April (read: April FOOL’s Day), when the full moon shines and illuminates the forest of Umstead Park, people arrive from far and wide, attired in all kinds of get-ups, with support crews, suitcases, supplies, and all sorts of good luck charms, and they proceed to run, walk and even crawl over 100 miles. Up hills, down slopes, through cool weather, heat, sun, dark, and even heat, chasing the elusive dream of covering a century of miles in 24 hours.

Every complete loop goes by Sally’s Asylum, an aid station extraordinaire, proving that asylums are not just for crazy people anymore.

So who in the world would go out into the woods and spend the whole weekend running?

Happy Camper

Disco Man

Trail Blazer

Girl in a Hurry

Tammy: No need to say more

Cruise Photo

Ready for a long hike in the woods

Crowd Support

Girlfriend Support Crew

A hug before the next round

“I can’t talk now; I’m in the middle of a 100-mile endurance race”

Cheeseburger in Paradise

This fellow’s packed for his long journey; Everything but the kitchen sink and the dog.

Jonesin for a sponsorship – really!

Catching some refill action

Dirt Diva: Catra Corbett goes out for more trail

Safari Man

In the witness protection program, she’s disguised as an ultra marathoner

Dude!  Get Down Tonight!

Number 268 – Feelin’ great!

Number 268 – Still Feelin’ Great!

Number 268 – Not So Great!

This guy had about 89 packages of Endurolyte tablets and wanted them all stuffed into the pockets of his shorts…clever way to get a butt massage. Miss Congeniality is happy to oblige.

Tammy in Paradise

Hey Baby!

The whole world’s a ballet stage

Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up

Guido the Duck

We’re all quackers for Guido

Catra loves her some tattoo

She didn’t need a headlamp for night running, as she glows in the dark

Stick a fork in him

Cat Show: Getting Their Claws On

So there was a cat show in town, and I know you think I live in a cat show, so why spend perfectly good money to see more cats?

Pretty Baby

Cats in cat shows are just like cats in our houses. They sleep.

But sometimes they sleep wearing little cowboy hats, probably dreaming of rounding up herds of mice out on the ranch.

After a hard day rounding up the little mouses, Hoss catches a little cat nap

A sleeping cat doesn’t care if he is wearing a silly hat. But stay away. When he wakes up and finds out what a human did to him, he’ll go to great lengths to avenge this humiliation. Which leads to the real reason for going to a cat show.  Cat show people!

Flash! New Years baby runs amok and attacks a woman at a cat show. Cat scratch fever, authorities speculate.

Some cats will wear frilly collars for treats.

Does this collar make my head look fat?

If I get out of this predicament, I will hunt you down and claw your eyes out as punishment, even if it takes 100 years.

Naked and exposed, and all I get is applause.

Are we having fun yet?

Bored and scared at the same time.

Jealous? Don't you wish you could be me? Me me me... But you are not me. Only I can be me and I deserve it.

Is that a toy on your head or are you glad to see me?