The Official Newspaper for Foster County
The Official Newspaper for Foster County
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These days, getting all three of my semi-grown daughters together for a family activity is like herding cats who have cars, jobs at coffee shops and their own debit cards. So, when our girls were able to pencil us in for a quick weekend trip to San Antonio, my wife and I jumped at the chance . . . or sort of hopped. Our backs hurt. Our justification for this little getaway was back-to-school shopping, which has come a long and expensive way from a new box of crayons and a Hello Kitty lunch bag....
The winds of change are howling. Last Friday, Aug. 18, was the last time our staff had the opportunity to see and inspect our newspapers before they entered the postal system. Effective with the Aug. 28 edition and for the foreseeable future, we will no longer be unloading totes and bundles of addressed newspapers off pallets and delivering them to the local post offices in Carrington and New Rockford. Instead, our printing company will take all the print copies of both the Independent and the...
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...
Declining attention spans have reached epidemic levels. That’s what Adam Brown, co-director of the Center for Attention, Learning and Memory at St. Bonaventure University in New York, tells Time. That’s certainly the case with me. As I struggled to write the first three paragraphs of this column, I searched autotrader.com for a new car I don’t need or want; searched Facebook Marketplace for lakefront vacation homes I can’t afford; and visited Amazon.com to order more expensive treats for my...
Both newspaper offices have been a flurry of activity lately. We’ve had many visitors this summer going through our bound files, or newspaper archives, to gather information published over the past 100+ years. I’m sure our guests in Carrington have heard their share of newsroom banter, as noise flows through those uninsulated faux walls like the North Dakota wind through a screen. Author Karri (Bye) Theis brought her daughter and a friend to the Carrington office to do research for a book she...
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...
I have many concerns about the proposed merger of CenDak and Fessenden Co-op. The joint letter sent out to members claims that a merger will maintain local control, expand access to talent, and allow the implementation of best practices. The past acquisition of Equity Co-op by Fessenden Co-op, resulted in a complete lack of local control at the Sheyenne house. With no onsite manager I have seen many things deteriorate, and locals have disagreed with hiring, safety, and day-to- day operational decisions. What is meant by “expand access to t...
American Legion Post 25 is wanting to cancel their Post Charter due to lack of interest in the community regarding new memberships. I find it hard to believe, with the size of Carrington, that there are not more Veterans willing to support their local Legion. Carrington used to have their own National Guard Armory, therefore there should be more Veterans that are eligible to join the Legion. You only have to serve one day on Active Duty to be eligible. The more members, we as the Legion have, the more votes we have with our Legislators in...
Hello everyone! I'm definitely a new face around here, but for the past nine weeks, I have had the opportunity to intern at the Foster County Independent and the New Rockford Transcript. This summer internship has been amazing, and I have learned so many valuable skills. I am a 2022 graduate of Carrington High School, and I just completed my freshman year of college at Brigham Young University (BYU) located in Provo, Utah. My plans in the future vary a little bit from the status quo....
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...
My family will soon take advantage of our state’s tax-free weekend for clothing and school supplies, but none of our hard-earned money will go for distressed clothing. Coincidentally, none of the money we spend at the food court will purchase pre-chewed burritos. Call us rebels. Silly me, I had assumed that America’s fascination with faded/torn/threadbare clothing would be a passing fad; but it seems to have settled in as the New Abnormal, along with backwards baseball caps, droopy pants and...
This Tuesday, Carrington is one of 17 communities across North Dakota hosting National Night Out events. The National Night Out program celebrates its 40th year of connecting law enforcement with the broader community. It all began with Matt, a volunteer with the Lower Merion Community Watch in the western suburbs of Philadelphia, Penn. in 1970. As one of a thousand volunteers in his area program, he prepared a newsletter to keep his colleagues informed about what was happening, and he learned...
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...
As a heat wave hits America from coast to coast, it’s hot outside — but cool inside, thanks to the triumph of air conditioning. For most of human history, there was little people could do to avoid heat. During the day, it drove people outside of their homes to enjoy the shade of a tree or to take a refreshing dip in a lake or river. At night, folks in cities slept outside on their porches, roofs and even fire escapes. When I was a kid in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, few homes had air con...
It’s been a wild week of baseball. I photographed the Babe Ruth District 4 Championship on Sunday in Hillsboro. The contest spanned two games, 17 innings and nearly six hours from first pitch to last photo op. Hats off to the New Rockford Black Sox for hanging tough against the HCV Blue Sox and finding a way to come out on top! The Legion district championship was played just as this edition of the Independent was going to press, and it was Carrington Post 25 vs. New Rockford Post 30 battling i...
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...
I dream of recreating some of the epic bike hikes I enjoyed as a kid back in the 1970s. My used Murray five-speed spyder-bike with the high handlebars only cost 25 bucks, but it was one of the coolest bikes of the age. Man, I loved that bike. During the long summer days, I rode with a group of kids. We’d ride for two or three hours in the county park, then make our way to McDonald’s for an orange drink and apple pie, which I paid for by borrowing a handful of coins out of my dad’s penny jar. It...
I was among a small group of three who decided to explore downtown Crosby, Minn., the nearest town to the lake house my husband’s family inhabited for a few days this past week. The population is 2,300, so it has a few more residents than Carrington. This central Minnesota town had a fair amount of traffic that Saturday afternoon, however, a sight that I would love to see in New Rockford or Carrington. No doubt the lake (one of Minnesota’s 10,000) – and the nearby Cuyuna Country State Recreation...
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....
People are getting so used to increasing crime rates in cities across America, an etiquette is evolving between some muggers and their victims. I learned about this while I walked with my friend and his wife from a Washington, D.C., pub to their home six blocks from the Hill. “When you get mugged, there are certain rules you must follow,” said my friend’s wife, walking at a fast gait. “WHEN I get mugged?” I said, trying to keep up with her. “She’s right,” chimed in my friend. “Muggers are of...
George M. Cohan, the son of Irish immigrants – often described as the man who owned Broadway – dominated American theater from 1901 until 1940. During that four-decade period, the man born on the Fourth of July produced 80 Broadway shows and wrote more than 1,000 songs. Although Cohan liked to describe himself as "just a song and dance man," he was a skilled actor, playwright and a director who once advised Spencer Tracy: "Spencer, you have to act less," counsel that guided the great screen act...
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...
“We are the Cubs from Den 3/And no one could be prouder/If you cannot hear our shout/We’ll yell a little LOUDER.” That chant from my Cub Scout pack-meeting days comes to mind as I explore the issue of moderation-challenged speakers, or, as the prestigious American Psychiatric Association clinically labels them, “bozos who wouldn’t know an indoor voice if it bit them on the rear.” Surely you could name some loud talkers. Maybe you are a loud talker. When you overhear people whispering...
No, we don’t need more sleep. It’s our souls that are tired, not our bodies. We need nature. We need magic. We need adventure. We need freedom. We need truth. We need stillness. We don’t need more sleep. We need to wake up and live. This poem, which was presented as a meme on my Facebook feed this afternoon, was just what I needed. It made me stop in my tracks and think. Better yet, it was just the inspiration I needed to write this column. I see and read a lot of conflicting advice these days,...
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...
