I'm Never Moving to Houston

When my husband and I got together, it was clear that for most people in his company, and indeed, many in his line of work, all roads lead, eventually, to Houston.  The idea was horrifying to both of us.  Louisiana, fine, but Houston?  We had to draw the line somewhere.  Houston represented (in our minds) everything that we found abhorrent and disappointing about American culture.  The Bush debacle.  Urban sprawl.  Outrageous heat.  Gun-loving Bible people.  Big hair and country club life.  We laughed at our little private joke.  Houston, the very idea.  So when we got engaged, and he continued working in oil, my general message was, "I'm so thrilled for our life together, our partnership, and I love you very much, but I just want you to know that I'm never moving to Houston."

The Miracle of Modern Clothing

I started thinking about the unsustainability of my shopping habits in my mid 20s.  I knew that I shopped too much, leaned too hard on the excitement of new clothes.  It seemed effective, though, and I have always loved clothes, so it was a hard habit to shift.  At the time, I was working to eat healthier, eliminate toxins from my beauty routine and be healthier in most areas of my life, but I was stumped by my closet.  At my grocery store, I could trace the origins of many foods, but what about my clothes?  I worried most about labor: unsafe factories who knew where, and children chained to sewing machines.  I worried also about chemicals in the fabric dyes, and what were all of those new fibers that I had never heard of listed on the tags?

"Kuwait on the Prairie"

As far as we can tell, there is no oil in Minnesota.  Mostly, as we observe what having oil can do for and to a community, we have been grateful that the place that we call home would not be used and abused by the boom and bust cycles which plague the modern oil economy.  During visits home, I have been happy about the lack of random derricks and rusted out equipment lingering in fields.  I have felt grateful that prices of food, fuel and housing do not feel as artificially inflated resulting from oil companies temporarily pouring money and people into a place.

On the other hand, there is the Bakken formation, in western North Dakota.  Growing up, all I knew of North Dakota was Fargo, where my parents were born and raised.  I knew that it was cold, even colder than where I had lived in Minnesota, and that many people I knew from the area around our cabin lived in Fargo during the times they were not enjoying the Minnesota lakes, where we all spent as much time as possible.

Oil, Energy and Consumption

After finally getting it through my thick skull that my husband would keep the job he liked in the oil industry, and maybe that would even be okay, I started paying more attention to it. I have learned facts that surprise me about energy, including information about how we collect it, create it, produce it, use it and waste it.

 

Married to Oil

I say a lot of negative things about being married to oil, and certain aspects of it do make me feel sometimes frustrated and powerless, on both personal and cultural levels.  But the truth is, as with most things, it's complicated.

My initial response to my husband’s job when we met wasn’t quite disdain, but I didn’t really consider it a positive situation. Secretly, I had it on my mental list of things that I hoped might change sometime in our future, if we had a future.  I thought maybe it was temporary stage that he would shift out of, like the few years that I was thinking about law school before I realized that it wouldn't be a good fit for what I really wanted. He loved Minnesota so much, and he was such a nice guy, how could this industry be his future?