The Official Newspaper for Foster County
The Official Newspaper for Foster County
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When we talk about immigrants in North Dakota, we’re often referring to people who came here in the late 1800s from Norway, Germany, England and Russia. Most of us today are descendants of those immigrants and we maintain that proud ancestry through festivals such as Norsk Høstfest in Minot, Sauerkraut Day in Wishek and the Ukrainian Festival in Dickinson. According to U.S. Census data, 40 percent of us are of German descent while 30.8 percent of us are Norwegian. The remaining 30 percent ar...
Often times we focus on the negative and how nothing seems to go right. Instead, we should always try to think of the glass as half full rather than half empty. Sometimes good things do happen to us, but we tend to live in the moment then forget about it. An event like that happened to me a couple of weeks ago and I want to share it with readers. I was invited to spend a morning with the staff at the Mystician, the Bismarck State College newspaper. When I got there, I met editor-in-chief Kayden...
There’s no doubt we’re having a mild autumn thus far. How many times do we go into the second half of October with overnight temperatures remaining above freezing or just barely freezing? And daytime highs, on select days of course, have been “hot” for this time of year, especially when the sun is shining. We’ll take it, right? We love an extended summer here on the northern Great Plains. But, there’s one problem with this scenario. On sunny days we see box elder bugs plastered on the sides o...
It isn’t often that journalists write about themselves, but in this case, it seems timely and necessary to describe something I’ve dealt with the past 6 1/2 years. On Friday morning the urology staff at Mayo Clinic declared me cancer free, and I’ve been switched to an annual checkup after three-month, then four-month and finally six-month visits. After getting that news, I wasn’t sure my mind or body could be that relaxed. I didn’t want to go dancing in the streets, but the relief was incredible...
As I write this article, the family of Jim Hillestad was preparing for his funeral that actually took place the afternoon of Oct. 9. Normally this weekly article doesn’t focus on something like the death of someone or their funeral. It’s most often the opposite of that and is geared toward optimism, but in this case, I feel compelled to recognize Mr. Hillestad in this forum. Jim was no ordinary individual for a lot of reasons, most notably he was 104 years old when he passed away on Oct. 2. Sec...
Two weeks ago I was at Bismarck State College for an event and it had been 38 years since I was on campus. It has changed drastically, but it was fun to be back there if only for a few hours. When it was my time to speak, I started with asking a question. “How many of you are Bismarck High School graduates?” Approximately 10 people raised their hands of the roughly 60 in attendance. Then I asked them if they know who Weston Dressler is? They all said they at least recognized his name. Unf...
Just about anywhere in the state of North Dakota, there have been reports in recent years of unusual animal sightings. These are animals that through recent history, at least, haven’t been seen in the state. But from 2000 on, numerous witnesses have come forward to tell their stories of what they may have seen. • First of all, moose are not uncommon to North Dakota. They’ve always been along the northern tier of counties, most generally in the Turtle Mountains near Bottineau and in the Pembi...
Sept. 14 was an unusual day in our little Ward County community of Carpio. It marked only the third time there had been a parade there in the past 20 years. This time it was the fire department’s parade. The local first responders were celebrating 75 years as a fire department and as a spectator looking on, it was impressive. The Carpio department brought out all the big guns, but that wasn’t all. Donnybrook, Tolley, Burlington, Berthold and Minot Rural fire departments were all involved, hel...
You may have noticed the leaves on the trees in your back yard beginning to change color. And as we go later into September, that foliage is becoming more intense and looks stunning. Granted, North Dakota doesn't have forests like other places do, so you can't just drive down a road and see what those in New England might see. But you can drive to certain places and see the same thing that is happening in Vermont, New Hamp-shire and New York, as well as parts of Michigan, Wisconsin and...
The festival coming up in Minot that celebrates all things Scandinavian is a lot more than just a party to celebrate Norwegian heritage. If you’ve never been there, you’re missing out on some of the best food you’ll ever taste. Numerous vendors have food items as you walk through the halls, but the Høstfest brings chefs in from Norway and Iceland to prepare signature dishes from those countries. It’s a foodie’s paradise. If you don’t go there for any other reason, go for the food. We often tal...
Several weeks ago I was asked to give a presentation to a Christian women’s group about growing vegetables in North Dakota as well as talk about farmers’ markets and how they operate. It was a bit surprising to learn that many people in this group weren’t aware of what is happening in this emerging industry. Growing vegetables and taking them to market is much like operating a grain farm. Almost always, however, vegetable farms are smaller acreages. And, unlike grain farms, there is no elevator...
We’ve all heard the creepy, campfire stories that scare us out of our wits. But there are actually documented accounts of the unexplained happening in various parts of our state. You can choose to believe it or not, but the people who tell these stories are quite serious. For instance, during Prohibition, tunnels underneath Minot were basically a haven for bootlegged booze and speakeasies. There was also crime in those tunnels because there was a lot of money changing hands. It is said that s...
I’m sure we’ve all been in Bismarck at one time or another. But, if you don’t live near Bismarck and don’t get there very often, the next time you do, you’ll most likely notice changes. The city of Bismarck seems to defy just about all of the rest of North Dakota and continues with a robust growth that has now pushed the city to 75,000 in population. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that the state capitol is located there, but it also sits in a strategic location in North Dakota which makes it a na...
On July 28, we attended the Medora Musical with our grandchildren. It’s always fun to get away from the monotony of our every-day routines to enjoy some taffy, ice cream and the musical. Since that Sunday night, a number of people have commented about the musical after we told them that we had attended. The first thing that should be mentioned is it’s amazing that there are people here in North Dakota who aren’t aware of the musical. In their defense, their often transplants who have come here...
A couple of weeks ago KFYR-TV in Bismarck reported North Dakota now has only 29 grade A dairy farms, down from 53 in 2020. That seems unusual given that milk is the official North Dakota beverage. The number of dairy farms has been sinking for many years with no recourse to keep the industry from spiraling out of control. Back in the 1950’s there were thousands of dairy farms in the state. Thousands might be a little misleading because back then, any farm with 10 or more milk cows was c...
It seems like it’s been a long time, but Leonard Peltier is back in the spotlight for a couple of reasons. Peltier, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, who is now 79, is serving two consecutive life sentences in a Florida prison for his role in a 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation that left two federal agents dead. First of all, he was recently denied parole from the prison that is approximately 70 miles northeast of Tampa. He has now been in prison for more than 29 y...
As the Olympics are beginning in Paris, there’s some interesting information that many people may not be aware of even though they may be sports fans. This is the third time since the modern Olympics began in Athens, Greece in 1896, that Paris will be the host city. The games were also held there in 1900 and 1924. It is also one of only three cities anywhere in the world to host the games three times. The others being Los Angeles and London. A total of 206 nations are represented at this y...
There’s been a lot of chatter lately on social media about lack of customer service. It seems it doesn’t matter if it’s retail, wholesale, the service industry or even medical clinics. Why is this happening? The easy answer that has become a cliche is everybody is short staffed. Employees get stressed out when they are overworked. I get that. It’s happened to me numerous times in my career. But this seems to be happening to a lot of people “customers” and they aren’t happy about it. Yes, I’ve...
Have you ever heard of Interstate 27? It’s a freeway that currently runs north/south entirely in the state of Texas, from Amarillo to Lubbock. The length of 1-27 is 124 miles, but is about to change in a big way. An number of media, especially those in Bismarck, have been reporting that I-27 will be running through western North Dakota, from Bowman in the south, to Plentywood, Mont., in the north. In effect, U.S. Highway 85 is going to become I-27. It will also run through western South D...
Lately, there have been a number of lists that have surfaced about who the most famous North Dakotan may be. There are several separate lists from Sports Illustrated to Forbes, but one thing is clear, on every list except for one outlier, the No. 1 person is the same – Josh Duhamel. Duhamel was born in Minot. His ancestry is German, and smaller amounts of Norwegian, French-Canadian, English, Irish, and Austrian (his last name is very common among Francophones in the world). Duhamel is an a...
A year ago Heber Jeffs was sentenced to five years in a Piute County, Utah court for first degree felony kidnapping of a 10-year-old girl he previously had in his care. When the girl’s mother sought to take her child back, Jeffs refused and fled Utah. He was later arrested in Minot, then extradited to Utah to face charges. Jeffs is the son of Warren Jeffs, the imprisoned leader of the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It was apparently a revelation from t...
There was some new information that came out last week regarding the implementation of nuclear energy in Saskatchewan. Sask Power released a statement saying it has made significant progress in its search for a host site for the province’s first Small Modular Reactor facility and it is seriously close to the North Dakota border. The SMR is actually a small nuclear reactor and after studying this for at least four years, Sask Power has whittled it down to two sites, both near Estevan, Boundary D...
It’s been just short of a month, but it appears the hype isn’t backing down regarding direct flights from Bismarck to St. Pete/Clearwater, Fla. Since May 15, Allegiant has added this flight twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday. Numerous people are talking about this and even though it gets hot in the Tampa Bay region during the summer, those flights continue getting booked. Maybe it’s such a “hot” topic because the flights are cheap right now as an introduction. You can get a one-way r...
Back in the 1990s when I lived in Langdon, I made frequent trips to Winnipeg, sometimes twice a week and most often took care of business, ate meals, stayed in hotels and attended football games in Winnipeg’s west end. Apparently, that part of town has changed dramatically since the ‘90s and nobody seems to know what to do about it. Crime, which was always restricted to the downtown area and almost always at night, has shifted. The crime rate in the west end has increased dramatically and des...
As many of you know, there’s been a push to have recreational marijuana legalized in North Dakota. In April, supporters submitted a petition to the secretary of state to get it on the November ballot. Now, supporters need to find 16,000 valid signatures by July 8 to make it happen. Should they get the signatures, we’ll see it on our ballots when we vote in November. But it doesn’t appear this will be rubberstamped even though medical marijuana is already legal in the state. They’ll most likely...
