The Official Newspaper for Foster County
The Official Newspaper for Foster County
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Let's get this par-tee started! It might not be quite golfing weather, but you'll wish you were out on the greens this spring. Beginning next Friday DPRCA presents "The Fox on the Fairway," a charmingly madcap adventure about love, life and man's eternal love affair with ... golf. This hilarious romantic comedy pulls the rug out from underneath the stuffy patrons of a private country club. Filled with mistaken identities, slamming doors and over-the-top shenanigans, it's a furiously paced farce...
High school is about exploring opportunities to grow and learn. For Arica Trottier, the Human Resource Coordinator at Dakota Growers Pasta Company in Carrington, it's an important time to engage with students as they explore. On Tuesday, March 7, Dakota Growers hosted about a dozen students from Carrington High School, and gave them a firsthand look at a future in the pasta and food processing industry. "They are going to be learning about every position that we have available," Trottier said...
I got my annual Girl Scout cookie fix last Friday. One of my favorite two Girl Scouts, my niece Megan, showed up just before supper time to make her pitch. I was happy to take a full case (and a couple extra boxes) off her hands in support of a good cause. Now, a few days later, as I munched on a Tagalong while trying to come up with a topic for this column, I got an idea. Personality tests are popular these days, particularly in work settings. Companies want to know what motivates a potential...
Our physical and virtual worlds are colliding at a seemingly breakneck pace. Gaming recently joined the ranks of school-sanctioned sports. NR-S is in the middle of its third season of having a competitive team, and my son is a member of the Valorant II team. First introduced in 2019, Valorant is a team-based tactical shooter and first-person shooter game developed and published by Riot Games. Folks, this is quite a different experience than any other in high school sports. My son plays from the...
This past weekend I had the opportunity to do something a little different. The 4-H Shooting Sports and Outdoor Skills Club in Eddy County spent time in the Turtle Mountain region, particularly at Lake Metigoshe State Park north of Bottineau. The trip was organized by club leader Mike Brazil, who believes it’s important to get youth outside, experiencing the outdoors. “I look at how we grew up, and then I see how our kids are growing up,” Mike said to me Saturday, “and I want them to get out...
It didn't take long for Carrington Public Schools to fill a key opening. As reported in the Independent in December, the school board unanimously gave the administration the green light to expand the career and technical education (CTE) programming at the high school. A new full-time teaching position, split into 5/7 agricultural and 2/7 FACS instruction, was posted following the meeting. Now, less than 60 days later, and in the middle of CTE Month, the district has filled that position....
We publish “scam alerts” in this newspaper periodically. Often we receive a press release from the AARP, and other times local authorities notify us that there has been a victim of a particular scam in our area. As I’m sure most do, I receive an endless sea of spam and phishing emails on a daily basis. Some days I spend more time clearing out unwanted messages than I do responding to actual requests from real people. Yesterday took the cake though. Since I began serving on the North Dakota Newsp...
I’ve seen a few Facebook posts from parents and grandparents showing their valentine box-making adventures recently, and just this morning we printed some artwork for one NR-S student’s valentine box. I can’t help but smile and cringe at the same time. I’m not particularly good at crafting valentine boxes, and I remember struggling to help my kids execute their ideas. I like wrapping presents, so the best I could come up with was to wrap an ample-sized box using the back side of some Christm...
Change is coming to N.D. high school basketball much like a freight train rolling down the track. Sports Reporter Erik Gjovik broke down the details of the latest proposal to move to a three-class system for basketball in a feature story this week. As he was unpacking all the information in the 22-page proposal, Gjovik discovered that the change would also greatly affect our newspaper coverage of area teams. Right now, the Independent covers four different teams: Carrington, Griggs-Midkota,...
Carrington Public School hosted its annual archery tournament on Saturday, Jan. 28, and over 200 archers from 15 different schools across the state faced off in bullseye and 3D competition. NR-S archers led in both the boys and girls division of the bullseye tournament, held in the East Gym. Sophomore Bradyn Collier scored a personal best, 287, and was named the Best Overall Male Archer. Senior Kyria Dockter topped all the female archers in the bullseye tournament with a score of 272. Gavyn...
All good things must come to an end. In Keith Larson's case, that "good thing" is the 43 years he has served as the treasurer of the Carrington Park District. As he hung up his hat as the CEO of Dakota Central effective December 31, he also retired from his accounting duties for the park board. When Larson started at Dakota Central in 1979, Warren Hight was the manager. Hight was also treasurer for the park district, so when he retired shortly thereafter, Larson was asked to take over his...
Veteran newspaperman Allen Stock has been out of the Independent office for a few weeks now. This is the first time since I purchased the newspaper in October 2021 that he has been absent for more than a few days. Let me tell you, readers, it has been an adjustment. Over the past 45 years, he has answered the office landline in the evening and on the weekends. If he is there when it rings, he picks up the phone. He also drops by the office everyday, even if only to check the building to see...
The 2023 archery season has begun, and Independent-area archers set their benchmarks at the Kensal bullseye tournament on Jan. 21. Senior Gavyn Anderson led the Cardinal archers to a solid finish at the tournament. Anderson's score of 272 was fourth-highest among high school boys. Four other Cardinals also made the top 10 among high school boys: freshman Alex Braaten earned the same score as Anderson but had fewer tens, and thus finished fifth; Joe Lindberg claimed the #7 spot with a 266;...
Sales tax collections continue to rise in the Central City. In 2022, the City of Carrington collected $943,828.37 in sales tax revenue, according to Auditor Jennifer Gast. Although the increase is less than 1 percent, it still represents a new record high for the city. Carrington collected about $936,000 last year. See the chart at right that shows the trend over the past 5 years. Sales tax dollars are separated into three funds: infrastructure, economic development and offset specials/debt...
The noise from the air handlers in the elementary school was the focus of discussion among Carrington Public School board members at their meeting Tuesday. The district received a noise dampening proposal from Johnson Controls that comes with a nearly $50,000 price tag. “It’s the most annoying issue we’ve had since we built the new school five years ago,” Elementary Principal Jenna Helseth said. It’s hard to hear in the classrooms, an issue administrators, staff and board members all agree the...
We’re only a few days into the state legislative session, and North Dakota newspaper publishers find themselves thrust into a battle to protect the public’s access to information. Senate Bill (SB) 2143, a bill that would eliminate publication of insurance abstracts in newspapers, was heard by the Senate’s Industry, Business and Labor Committee last week. Insurance abstracts, or short briefs that illustrate the financial position of insurance companies that write policies in North Dakota, are pub...
How much snow did we get last night? It was quite cold this morning. Did we set a record low? What is the likelihood that the James River will flood this spring? These daily weather questions are answered with the help of cooperative weather observers like Richard Richter. Weather observation and data collection are just part of his duties at the NDSU Carrington Research Extension Center (CREC). He succeeded Dave Copenhaver in the role some 17 years ago. Richter has worked at the CREC as a...
We’re in the last week of holiday break for my college-aged daughter, and I’m wondering how it went so quickly. We’ve gone over her grades from her first semester as a full-time college student, and she’s looking ahead to her spring semester schedule. Over the past three weeks, she’s visited friends and family, helped me with a couple of projects at work, and done a fair amount of cooking and cleaning at home. Man, I’m going to miss that as soon as she’s gone again! By the time many of you read...
The state's population may be increasing, but it's not growing nearly fast enough to ease the burden of workforce shortages felt throughout the state. Gov. Doug Burgum welcomed the latest estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau last week, showing that North Dakota's population reached a new all-time high of 779,261 residents as of July 1, 2022. The estimate represents an increase of 4,313 people from last year's estimate and is 167 residents more than the official 2020 census count. Since 2010,...
This Christmas was definitely one to remember for some, and not necessarily in a great way. Some didn’t make it home due to the ridiculous weather we’ve been having. Others I know were sick with COVID, or influenza, or RSV, or some other unknown respiratory virus, so they resorted to rest on the big day. We were fortunate. Everyone was healthy after a rough bout with sickness around Thanksgiving, and we only had to travel about five blocks to our Christmas Day celebration at my mot...
For nearly a week, from Dec. 12 through Dec. 16, Foster County and much of the Great Plains endured one of the most severe and long-lasting blizzards in recent memory. Most of North Dakota was effectively shut down, as crews worked around the clock to clear city streets. Meanwhile, Monday's freezing rain and the near-zero visibility that followed often made county roads and highways impassable. Both the New Rockford-Sheyenne and Carrington Public Schools, and many more throughout the state,...
New year’s resolutions - who actually sticks to them anyway? I’ve said for years that there is no reason to make one if I don’t plan to keep it. Thus, I haven’t made any resolutions for some time. Readers, this year is different. So many people I love and respect have told me that I have “too much on my plate.” “You’ll find a way to get it all done,” I keep telling myself. “Just finish these three (or 10) more items on the to-do list and you can rest.” The trouble is, the list keeps getting lo...
Melissa Hansen, Agriculture Education and FFA Advisor at Carrington High School, appealed to the school board Tuesday morning for an expansion in agriculture and family and consumer science education. She prepared a proposal with three options: 1) Hire a second full-time ag instructor, 2) Hire a part-time (5/7 time) ag instructor, or 3) Hire a full-time instructor to be split between ag and FACS. The school recently completed a Career and Technical Education (CTE) program review with the state,...
Through all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, I have to keep reminding myself to take work and life one step at a time. “Do one thing well, and then move on to the next,” I think. From workforce shortages and winter storms to shipping delays and sick days, we are all dealing with a lot. A colleague of mine missed a meeting a couple of weeks ago, and after learning that it was totally out of her control, I understood. “We all need a little grace and peace this holiday season, that’s fo...
