The Official Newspaper for Foster County
The Official Newspaper for Foster County
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In this day and age you wouldn’t think something so simple as cellular telephone coverage would be so spotty, but it is. There are numerous “dead spots” across North Dakota, and depending on where you experience this, you sometimes have to shake your head because it really shouldn’t be rocket science. Joel Heitkamp talked about this on KFGO radio one day, but I’m not sure anything was ever done to rectify the situation. I personally don’t remember where all the spots are in the state, but...
I’m sure just about everyone can remember the Dakota Access Pipeline protests that took place in 2016 and 2017. They lasted a long time and things got ugly. I’m sure some of you reading this were involved in it in some way. First responders were sent, law enforcement was sent, protestors came from all over the U.S. and Canada and they all stayed there for a very long time. That placed a lot of stress on the locals; those people living in Morton County south of Mandan who sometimes cou...
When I moved to Langdon in 1995, the company that owned the newspaper put me up in a hotel until I could find a place to live. It didn’t take but a couple of weeks and I found a decent apartment that wasn’t too expensive and it was close to work so I took the third-floor loft. During the two years I lived there I got to know the neighbors quite well. Almost all of them were elderly or recently retired. One neighbor, who was the exception, was a teacher at Langdon High School. One of those nei...
We have some friends who grew up in northeastern North Dakota, went to college at the University of North Dakota, then worked in Grand Forks for many years. Then, the husband got a job in Minneapolis that paid far better than anything he could have ever imagined in Grand Forks or Fargo. The wife was able to work from home after moving to the Twin Cities. For the past seven years, these two, who don’t have any children, are set. Their salaries together total a half million dollars a year, they b...
As a writer, this piece of information is, well, really stepping outside the box. It’s about an Australian magpie who took Melbourne by storm. Many of us know that Australians love their animals and one example is they worked feverishly to save as many koalas as they could following devastating fires that happened west of Sydney. The situation with Gus the Magpie is similar. Judy, my friend who lives in the Melbourne suburb of Tarneit, found an injured magpie and took him in and nursed him b...
Somebody help me out here. I’ve been a football fan for a lot of years and honestly don’t know what is going on right now. Why is there so much hatred for Carson Wentz? My guess is it’s people who are hiding behind a computer screen and have never played football. I just don’t get it. Here is a guy who grew up and played football at Bismarck Century, went on to be successful at North Dakota State University, then got into the National Football League. He’s a professional football player and all...
Dickinson State University was recently in the news for all of the wrong reasons. Five majors have been eliminated and several faculty laid off because of it. Students who were interviewed on TV were obviously upset about this and they have every right to be. For those of us looking in the from the outside; we obviously don’t know all the details of what led up to this. However, this doesn’t make sense. DSU President Stephen Easton went on TV to say that math, communications and political sci...
During the second half of the 1990s, I operated the newspaper in Langdon and often made short, 38-mile trips to Morden, Manitoba, for various reasons. At the time, Langdon’s population was about 2,500 and Morden was just shy of 5,000. That has always been a snapshot in my mind, until a couple of weeks ago. I was looking through some information about the Corn and Apple Festival in Morden and saw that Morden’s population is now nearly 11,000. When I checked Langdon’s population, it was 1,884...
On Wednesday my young assistant and myself were on our delivery route going through Minot when we saw something we don’t normally experience in Minot. It was a high speed chase involving a late model sedan and three, four and finally seven Ward County Sheriff’s Department vehicles. This happened about 4 p.m., on Wednesday, Sept. 27, just about the time many people are getting off work and commuting through the major thoroughfares. We were going south on 16th Street and were somewhere between Min...
There have been a lot of articles recently about AM radio and its impending doom. Apparently, some auto manufacturers are eliminating AM radio from their cars, but there continues to be a pushback from government and the private sector. Someone asked me the other day if I thought AM radio will be going away? My reply was not a chance because there are too many people and organizations dependent on AM radio. All you need to do is look across North Dakota to know and understand how important AM...
There’s a 1941 school map of North Dakota that hangs in my garage. Knowing of my interest in geography, one of my wife’s friends gave me that map when she moved away. I look at that map every day when I’m in the garage and after six years of hanging there, it still hasn’t gotten old (no pun intended). There’s always something to look at and the most obvious to me; something that will not change over time is that North Dakota spans 3 degrees of latitude, from 46 Degrees North to 49 Degrees N...
Have you ever been stopped, ticketed or even arrested by the North Dakota Highway Patrol? If so, did you notice there is something different about this law enforcement agency compared to others? It’s simply professionalism. I’m not trying to ding other law enforcement. I have friends in law enforcement, including the Nelson County sheriff, a former Ward County sheriff and a couple of local police officers. They’re good people and they do their jobs well. But NDHP officers are a cut above. And,...
Since July 4, my wife and I have had two opportunities to drive across Garrison Dam. The first trip’s destination was Rapid City and the second, Beulah. I drove the first time and she drove the second time. Have you ever taken a close look at that dam? It’s an incredible feat of engineering. Because I was the passenger the second time, I looked at things I don’t normally get to see as a driver. And as we passed from McLean County into Mercer County, the only thing I could think of is the press...
North Dakota Tourism tells us there are a lot of visitors to our state during the summer months. And that’s true. Just take a drive through the Badlands or visit Medora and you’ll see all kinds of vehicles and license plates from out of state. But tourism isn’t limited to those two areas. We have Lake Metigoshe, Fort Ransom, Garrison Dam, Devils Lake, the Pembina Gorge is now designated as a state park and others. It doesn’t stop with tourism. People from out of state come here for busines...
Have you heard about this incident in Marion County, Kansas? Apparently the police chief ordered a raid on the local newspaper, the Marion County Record and seized computers, cell phones, a router and photographed the entire office. When this story broke, the reason for the raid didn’t make any sense. The publisher was investigating a DUI. Newspaper editors do that all the time. That shouldn’t be cause for a raid. But on Tuesday, the Kansas City Star reported the publisher was actually inv...
There was a time not so long ago that you could easily get ethanol (alcohol fuel) in North Dakota, but now you have to search for it and sometimes when you find an E-85 refueler, the place is “out of stock.” Why is this the case? The availability of ethanol is definitely lacking across the state. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, there are 14 (E-85) locations in North Dakota and eight of them are in Fargo and two are in Grand Forks. You used to be able to fill with ethanol as far west as...
This past weekend we took the grandkids to Medora to see the musical, eat a pitchfork fondue steak and take in the sights. As always, it was first-class entertainment and it was good to see so many young people from within North Dakota picked to perform on stage. We stayed in a Medora hotel and because it was hot at the end of July, we took plenty of water; in bottles and carbonated water in cans. When we were packing up to leave, one of the grandkids gathered all the aluminum cans and...
In recent weeks I’ve had the opportunity to chat with two 10-year-old girls. One is my granddaughter and the other is the granddaughter of my farm intern. They come from completely different backgrounds; one lives in a city in South Dakota and goes to a private school and the other lives in rural North Dakota and is home schooled. They’ve never met, but they have one thing in common. They both are able to hold short conversations in Spanish. These girls are 10 years old and they have already lea...
It seems that every year, just before the North Dakota State Fair kicks off, there are construction zones everywhere. In fact, all we have to say is “state fair’s coming to town,” and others know exactly what it means. When I first moved to this area of the state in 2000, it seemed like a coincidence that all this construction in the city of Minot was going on immediately before and during the fair. It continued year after year and actually ramped up. You can’t help but wonder why, when hundreds...
There were some comments regarding the quiz in last week’s article. One person said they didn’t get any of the 10 questions correct. Another said they only answered four correctly with the others just guesses. And that was exactly my point for presenting that quiz last week. A lot of people aren’t going to be aware of the answers to these questions because they just aren’t taught, but should be common knowledge to all of us. I’ll admit, the Portal question would have been tough for most peop...
It’s no secret that students coming out of our high schools lack knowledge of history and geography. Is it poorly taught, does the curriculum matter to school boards, maybe students themselves just don’t like it, or is there some other reason not publicly known. Regardless, we often lack this knowledge and when we become adults and move onto college and the professional world, we should at least have some kind of knowledge of history and geography. Just to give you an example here’s a quiz....
In last week’s article we discussed how shortages in the trades are making it difficult for businesses to carry out good customer service. But it isn’t just with electricians, plumbers and carpenters. Just about every industry; wholesale, retail, government, schools and military all have shortages in personnel. It’s even hard to find enough baseball coaches right now. Just this morning, there was a news segment about a severe shortage of air traffic controllers with as many as 3,000 set to so...
In the past several months we’ve had a lot of work done on our house and greenhouse. New kitchen cabi-nets, some electrical rewiring in the greenhouse and house and new plumbing in the kitchen. It’s all but finished now but it brings to mind how critical the trades are and how short they are of personnel. We were lucky to get skilled people who had been here before. But that was easier said than done. And when each of them was here to take care of their respective part of our house, each one...
Believe it or not, there are people out there who still don’t know what’s causing the “mysterious” death of honeybees. I thought this was old news, but apparently not. For a time, that was the case. Nobody knew what was killing honeybees. But research in France during the 1990s proved that a class of chemicals called neonicanoids was the culprit. In 1999, France began banning neonicanoids. There are seven chemicals known as neonicanoids. They include imidacloprid, acetamiprid, thiaclo...
On May 22, Gov. Doug Burgum announced the Pembina Gorge State Recreation Area will be developed and become North Dakota’s 14th state park. A total of $6 million in funding for this venture has been secured by the North Dakota Parks & Recreation Department during the 2023 legislative session. A matching $2 million will come from a federal grant. The park, just west of Walhalla in both Pembina and Cavalier counties, is a sight to behold. It starts at the Canadian border and runs in a bit of a s...
