In Watford City, there is a 32 year old woman named Jessie Veeder, who has recorded about four albums. She writes songs, takes nature photographs, writes weekly newspaper articles, and sometimes is a guest on Prairie Public Radio.
If I remember correctly, she might have recorded her first album when she was 16 years old. She was performing then. When she was several years older, she began touring and playing at small venues. Her music is described as folk and country. According to Jessie, her music, writing, and photography, are all about the beauty of rural Western North Dakota.
You can go look at her website titled, “Meanwhile back at the ranch…”. On her website, Jessie has several hundred photographs of rural Western North Dakota. The subject matter of her photographs are horses, flowers, dogs, fields, old barns. You can also read about her music.
In this post, I will acknowledge that Jessie worked hard as a music artist. She wrote her own songs, recorded albums, toured, and performed. Somewhere along the way she got a degree in communications and public relations from North Dakota State University.
It is good that Watford City has someone to be proud of, and someone that writes positively about Western North Dakota in the newspaper, and speaks positively about it on Prairie Public Radio.
I don’t want to be too mean about it, but I do want to be mean about it, Western North Dakota has been like being in prison for the vast majority of people for the past eight years. And before that, it was a cold, barren, desolate, impoverished area.
Jessie, why don’t you take some photographs of the friends of mine from North Dakota whose teeth are rotting out because they never could afford dental care living here in North Dakota, because they were so poor? Why didn’t you take photographs of all the people living in their cars? Why didn’t you take pictures of the workers who got burned up on the oil rigs, who got burned up welding tanks, who got electrocuted at a drill site, who died opening an oil tank, who got their hands cut off, their fingers cut off? Western North Dakota has been a shit-hole hell for the past eight years. And before that it was poor, cold, barren, and desolate.
Jessie, why don’t you go to the new apartments in Watford City or Dickinson, and talk to the wives who live there. Ask them how they like paying $2,000 per month for a two bedroom apartment, being on a lease and being scared that their husband is going to lose his job. How they like having to stay inside their two bedroom apartment October through April, because it is so cold outside and there is no where to go.
Let me point out, that describing a life living on a parent’s farm, not having to pay rent, not having to worry about being evicted, not having to go to a job every day, could make Texas, Tennessee, Idaho, anywhere, seem like a nice place to live. In Western North Dakota, the vast majority of people are living in overpriced rental housing, are struggling financially, and are in danger of losing their job and their housing. You should write about how things really are.
Dickinson58601 
What a dick. I serviced that area for years and they are great people. High pay equals high risk. Nobody forced you to be in the area.
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What I wrote about Jessie Veeder, the Watford City Chamber of Commerce, the Dickinson Chamber of Commerce, and most everything else that I write about, I am trying to tell people from out-of-state what it will be like if they move to western North Dakota, before they move here. People from out-of-state don’t know what they are getting themselves into when they move to western North Dakota because there is not a lot of truthful information published,however there is a lot of misinformation, propaganda, and false rumors.
People from out-of-state don’t know how high the housing prices will be, the housing prices here are double or triple what they are in most other places in the United States. People from out-of-state don’t know what it will be like to live here. They don’t know that there is no Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Lowes, Home Depot, Burger King, Wendys, McDonalds, Taco Bell, or Arby’s in Watford City. They don’t know that you can’t go out to bars and drink in Watford City or Dickinson because the police are so aggressive in DUI arrests.
I have seen many, many people have to move out of their apartments in Watford City not long after they got here, way before the end of their lease, because they have lost their job. They were totally unprepared for the actual reality of Watford City. They entered into $1,000 to $1,500 per month leases not long after moving to Watford City because they thought that everyone makes so much money in Watford City. This is not always true. I have never lived anywhere else where I have seen people so misunderstand what they are getting into and be so unprepared for what happens to them than I have here in North Dakota.
I don’t know what you are talking about when you say “High pay means high risk” when there are only about thirty drill rigs operating in North Dakota right now. I looked up what you do for a living, how can you not have noticed that the majority of people in North Dakota are just getting by right now financially? I meet and talk to people every day, and they are either just getting by, struggling financially, or are having to move away because they have lost their job.
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