The Official Newspaper for Foster County
The Official Newspaper for Foster County
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The Fourth of July has always held a special power over me. I love the hot dogs and burgers and my mother’s delicious potato salad. Mostly, though, I’ve always cherished the great gatherings of family and friends that culminate with spectacular fireworks displays that light up the dark summer sky. I knew as a kid that on July 4 we were celebrating our many freedoms, which we earned by gaining independence from the British during the Revolutionary War, and which we cemented with the creation of...
As I write this, summer has officially begun. It’s the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year. The weather is fine, and it’s time to take in a live show (or nine). This year a pop culture icon will come alive at the little theatre on Central Avenue in New Rockford. “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” debuts July 12 at Old Church Theatre, featuring the art of cartoonist Charles M. Schulz. “Peanuts” debuted in newspapers on Oct. 2, 1950, years before my parents were even born. The short str...
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...
The national debt broke the $32 trillion barrier this week. It’s a number so huge it’s incomprehensible to the average citizen. We knew $32 trillion was coming. It just got here a lot faster than the money experts thought, thanks to the roughly $5 trillion that the feds spent to help people and businesses withstand the many blows inflicted by Covid-19 and lockdowns. If you are a good citizen who’d like to gift a few bucks to the federal government to help pay down the national debt, you need...
“Mom, wanna be on my BeReal?” my 16-year-old daughter asked me one day. “Um, sure,” I replied sheepishly, because frankly I didn’t even know what she was talking about. She told me to look at her camera phone, and she quickly snapped a photo of us. I didn’t really give it much more thought at the time. Since then, my husband and I have made guest appearances in both our daughters’ BeReal feeds several times. What is BeReal, you ask? Well, it’s just another social media app that all the kids ar...
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...
Modern dads are portrayed as fools in television sitcoms and commercials. Lucky for me, they are the polar opposite of the loving, strong and decisive father who raised me. Over the years, as I clogged a toilet with an apple core, shattered a picture window with a baseball and hit a golf ball through a neighbor’s window, he had only one thing to say: “Son of a !!!” He always fixed the things I broke — once he found his tools, which I was forever losing. He often found them lying in the yard af...
This time of year, there’s a produce patch in my backyard that requires no maintenance other than a regular cutting. It’s none other than rhubarb, and I don’t enjoy it nearly as much as I should. Botanically, rhubarb is a vegetable. In use it is considered a fruit. That’s according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who also notes that rhubarb actually belongs to the buckwheat family. Most of the nation’s rhubarb is grown in Washington, Michigan and California. There’s even a grading sys...
Back in the 1960s, the United States Department of Agriculture produced a map of the nation with a number of hardiness zones to help guide gardeners and landscapers with better planting advice. However, those early maps don’t reflect the same zones as today’s maps. There are no doubt, warmer, albeit slightly, patterns that are moving farther north. In fact, when you take North Dakota into account, there have been some major changes since 1990. It’s the same with Manitoba and Saskatchewan, which...
It’s long past time for me to put a flagpole in the center of my front yard – one that holds a large American flag that dances proudly in the summer breeze. We bought such a flagpole for my father on his 70th birthday, shortly after he and my mother moved into a new house with a stately front yard. He was proud of his flag – with good reason. He was born during the Great Depression. As a boy, he was immersed in our country’s great unified effort to defeat mighty foes during World War II. He...
Newspaper publishers were recently told that our postage rates are set to increase by 8 percent in July. This is the third rate increase since August 2022, and a total of 35 percent in increases in just over two years. The cost of printing newspapers has also increased, by 24 percent since the spring of 2021. Annual subscription rates, meanwhile, at the Independent and Transcript have increased by $6 in the past 8 years I’ve been a publisher. In order to fully cover the costs of printing and p...
Often times when I’m involved with my radio hobby of DXing, I’ll run across a radio station I’d never heard of before. When that happens, I look up the distance between my location and the radio tower. In so doing, I’ve come to realize that we are closer to many places than we realize. I’m of course, using my home location, which is in Carpio, a small town in Ward County northwest of Minot. So, if you live in Wahpeton and read this, obviously the respective distances will be far different...
It’s a positive trend that I hope continues: the resurgence of summer picnics. According to Mental Floss, the Covid pandemic caused a picnic boom beginning in 2020 that is showing no signs of letting up. In 2020, with restaurants shuttered and experts telling us the bug didn’t spread so easily in outdoor air, many people, in particular younger people, began picnicking. I was lucky to grow up only a few miles from a county park that offers 3,000 acres of rolling green hills, walking and biking tr...
Dear Editor: What is a cemetery? When you Google the word cemetery, the description is: A designated place where the remains of people who have died are laid to rest in specific, identifiable burial sites. Cemeteries are widely regarded as sacred places that are entrusted with respectfully caring for deceased individuals. Two words stand out – sacred and respectfully. The Cemetery Board, the maintenance crew, all the volunteers that water flowers, the local companies that donate their time, materials, and equipment know how much work it t...
Summer is a great time to relax with a good book, whether it be under a cabana on the beach or in a chair on your patio. Our local libraries in both Carrington and New Rockford are hosting Summer Reading Programs, and their kick-off celebrations are coming up this week as we officially start summer break. A staff member in the Carrington office was chatting with one of her book club buddies last week. They had finished their latest title before everyone else and were so surprised by the ending....
It was recently announced that two more North Dakota newspapers have closed for an indefinite amount of time. They are the New Town News and Mountrail County Record in Parshall. That brings the recent number of closures to six in what seems to be a stunning trend. First, it was the Metigoshe Mirror, then the Walhalla Mountaineer, the Dunn County Herald in Killdeer, the Cavalier County Republican in Langdon and now the two Mountrail County newspapers. Thus far, there hasn’t been an official w...
Every year, polls show that a large number of Americans don’t know why we celebrate Memorial Day. According to People, a 2020 Onepoll survey found that fewer than half of the 2,000 people surveyed knew that the purpose of Memorial Day was not to honor those who served in the armed forces, but to honor those who gave their lives while they served. Few Americans are aware that the original reason for Memorial Day dates back to the Civil War. Originally called Decoration Day, its purpose was to rem...
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and it’s time to get real. Here in the newsroom, we struggle too. No matter how many positive stories we publish, the “bad news” stories seem to rise to the top for readers. Yes, we must report on these topics, however unpleasant. It’s our job as journalists to read through the police reports and court filings and help citizens make sense of the crazy in our world. And when we do publish all the details, we know those stories will get read. However, it’s th...
It was past midnight, maybe 1 or 2 a.m., that I woke up some four weeks ago. I could not breathe. Thinking that my days as a COVID recipient, pneumonia and lungs holding water were gone, I got scared. Really scared. It was really difficult to breathe ... I was just gasping. My wife, a real night owl, was in the kitchen crocheting the little doll blankets used for the Shoe Box program. I wandered into the kitchen and told her, “Call 911, I need an ambulance right now!” She jumped to attention, ma...
Last week we summarized several ghost towns across the state. This week we’ll switch it up and take a look at North Dakota’s 10 newest communities. Six of them are either suburbs of Fargo or are nearby. Four are independent communities in western North Dakota. 1.) Oxbow 1988 – This is clearly the newest community in North Dakota. It was incorporated as a city in 1988 and sits 15 miles south of Fargo in Cass County. The 2020 population of Oxbow was 381, which is up 75 since the 2010 Census. 2.) R...
Every year for Mother’s Day I give flower pots from a local greenhouse to my mom and my mother-in-law. It’s a great way to show our appreciation, and it brightens their yard and gives them something to enjoy all summer and into the fall. I typically choose an arrangement of common varieties, such as geraniums or petunias, that has already been potted and ready for purchase. This year I decided to take it up a notch. The theme is kindness and gratitude, and I’m planting the pots myself so I can...
If you’ve ever read a book called “Ghosts of North Dakota,” there’s one common theme throughout the publication. It’s about ghost towns in North Dakota, but nearly every community written about still exists. There are real ghost towns in North Dakota. It’s just that finding history about them is not always easy or plentiful. But there are ways to find out about some places that may have thrived during territorial days and today are nothing more than a memory. Newspaper archives at the North Dako...
Here we immigrants have been in North Dakota officially as a recognized territory since 1861 and our wind swept prairies are still suffering from an embarrassing nakedness. It seems appropriate to bring the subject up since May is Arbor month and there is no one more romantic about trees than Joyce Kilmer: I think that I shall never see A poem as lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day And lifts her leafy a...
You’ve no doubt read the headlines about this legislative session. The past four months have been a rollercoaster of bills and legislative priorities. As the 68th Legislative Assembly has wrapped up and gone home, I want to share some highlights from this session affecting our state’s insurance industry. Your legislature has made a big step forward in fire safety. With the passage of SB 2211, we’re providing all the funding that is meant for the fire service back to local fire departments and districts. The funds from insurance premium taxes...
My trip to Salt Lake City was one I won’t forget. Breathtaking scenery, great food, and family time were among my favorite parts of the five-day excursion west. Leaving work behind was definitely the hardest. I knew it would be a challenge, and so I made lists and meticulously tied up loose ends before we hit the road. I left the keys in my vehicle in the garage, just in case the newspapers didn’t make it to Carrington on Friday and needed to be picked up in Jamestown or Fargo (as has been the...
