The Official Newspaper for Foster County
The Official Newspaper for Foster County
Sorted by date Results 376 - 400 of 489
Dear Editor: I am writing on behalf of the Foster County Historical Society which owns the museum and the Putnam House. At present time, we receive ¼ of a mill from Foster County for operating expenses. We are on the ballot asking for an additional ½ mill. The museum is an important repository for county history and the Putnam House serves as an attraction and venue for our community. Currently, the Putnam House needs major outside maintenance which we are unable to afford. The present ¼ mill does not cover our utility and maintenance bi...
For the past several days the news has been dominated by the loss of Queen Elizabeth II and rightfully so. She was probably the best known person on the face of the earth. And while some people believe it has been overdone, there are plenty of Americans, plenty of North Dakotans, who have been mourning the queen just as the British have been doing. You have to admit, 70 years on the throne is a remarkable achievement, one that quite possibly will never be duplicated. What struck me was the day...
“Inflation is killing us,” Dorsey Crank announced as he entered the community hall where the Homeland Security Committee was meeting to plan Christmas decorations for 2022. “We are on the short end of the stick,” he continued. “I think our retailers and service people are taking the opportunity to grab excess profits.” That suggestion really steamed Madeleine Morgan, the newcomer from Montana who spoke at meetings, disregarding the code of the town that women did not speak in public meetings. ...
I thrive on deadlines. I get a sense of accomplishment every time I can check something off my to-do list, flip through the pages of a newspaper fresh off the press, or see a finished project come to life. I even had shirts made for the staff in New Rockford that said, “Just Duck It.” The “duck” represents the file transfer software, Cyberduck, that we use to send our newspaper pages to press. When we are ready, we “feed the duck” with pdf files, one for each page in the print edition. Th...
Now that harvest is in full swing, a lot of things come to mind, but there is one thing I doubt many people think about and that is the loss of the old, wooden elevators, sometimes called prairie skyscrapers. On Sunday, we made a trip to Bismarck to purchase a lawn mower and went through the community of Coleharbor. There are, of course, two of the original structures still standing tall against a backdrop of canola, barley and wheat. These prairie icons are quickly disappearing. There are...
There are stubborn and unwelcome facts about getting older. The gray hairs that weren't there the day before. The injuries from running or other sports that come easier and are harder to shake off than they were before. And your friends die. This summer, I've said farewell to two dear friends who, as dear friends do, shaped my life in their own unique and individual ways. Both of them were named Robert. And though they never met, the interwoven threads of their friendships can never be unraveled...
I have a song by Kenny Chesney in my head right now, “The Boys of Fall.” “Standin’ in the huddle listenin’ to the call Fans goin’ crazy for the boys of fall” Yes, it’s Homecoming, and this time of year, I drift back to the autumns of my youth. I’m a football fan to the core. It’s one of the only things I actually like about the fall season, in fact, other than the beauty of the leaves changing color. If I’m home and there’s a game to watch, it’s probably on the flat screen in my living room....
Some locals in the Carpio area still talk about an explosion on a nearby farm that happened 100 years ago on Aug. 31. This was no ordinary explosion like you would think. It wasn’t gasoline and it wasn’t spontaneous combustion. This bomb went boom when 500 pounds of steam in a threshing crew boiler caused the boiler to blow up, sending debris all over the neighborhood and killing two men working on the boiler. According to an account in the Aug. 31, 1922 edition of the Renville County Far...
I’ve been called a lot of things in my life, some of them endearing, most of them not. When Barack Obama referred to conservatives like me as people who cling to our guns and religion, I was offended. Later, when Hillary Clinton called conservatives who weren’t going to vote for her a “basket of deplorables,” it looked as if another Democrat was employing crude, awkward rhetoric to gin up her base. It had the opposite effect, which helped put another guy in office who wasn’t shy about insulting...
We’ve had some heavy news weeks this summer. Burglaries, fatal crashes, residents fighting cancer, and a suspected murder-suicide were among the hard news headlines of the summer 2022 news cycle in our area. That said, we’ve also celebrated a lot. Our communities have a way of coming together when we really need to, don’t we? When I reflect on this past summer, a song by The Byrds comes to mind, “Turn, Turn, Turn.” We’ve had “A time to dance, a time to mourn,” all in the past few months. Ple...
A woman with four young children stopped by the farmers’ market last week and she said they had just moved to North Dakota from Louisiana. “From hurricanes to blizzards,” she said. But, she seemed happy to be in Minot and her kids were relaxed and appeared to be having fun. As our conversation continued, she asked myself and my intern what there is to do around here? Of course, our answers centered around the usual things to do; high school sports, fishing on the lakes, traveling to touri...
“Half of that goes to the bank for your college fund!” That’s what my father told me in the 8th grade, when I got my first paycheck for waking up at 5:30 a.m. to ride my bike a few miles to Cool Springs Driving Range before school, where I plucked golf balls for a dollar an hour. My dad had six kids to feed on a single income, after all. Paying my full college tuition bill was never going to be an option. There was only one option for me: work. When I got a little older I started mowing lawns...
My mother made me do it! Rather, she really didn't make me, she actually taught me how to do it through lots of hard work and all the time I spent in her garden as a kid. I have and never did regret it, though, because of what followed in my life to date in the hobby of gardening. The thought of this came to mind following the story carried in this paper a couple weeks ago featuring the Community Garden Project currently underway in the city. It all started, as I remember, that Dad and I were...
If you don’t know or understand French, let me clarify what this headline means. Simply put, it’s “stop the sugar.” As mentioned in the past, this weekly column is mostly about events happening in North Dakota, or the surrounding states or provinces. This week I feel compelled to write about sugar, or “sucre” in French. A few nights ago after packing products for the farmers’ market, I had some odd shaped cucumbers left over so I decided to make a cucumber salad since these cucumbers did...
My cover has been outed. A friend said he Googled me and discovered that I was older than dirt. Since it may not be dirt from the Garden of Eden, the cat is out of the bag and the truth must be told. I was born prematurely and have been on a dead run since. It was during the Great Depression when I became the eighth in the family of 11 – and we weren’t even Catholic. For my mom, the depression got to be greater so she wanted to name my “Depressing” but my Dad found a Lloyd in English history...
As the old joke goes, there are only two seasons in North Dakota: winter and road construction. If there wasn't a year where that is more true, it would be 2022. Our area saw snowstorms in late April, and as soon as the white crap melted work was underway on numerous construction projects. This construction season our pages have been filled with updates on the various projects underway. We're "under construction," folks, "a work in progress." Three major highway projects are underway, according...
A kidnapping that was solved last week received little attention in the U.S. media, but had possible implications for North Dakota and Montana. It certainly did in South Dakota because that is where two children, a brother and sister were found safe. A man named Benjamin Moore, a known sex offender who has served prison time in Canada, and his common law wife, kidnapped 7-year-old Luna Potts and her 8-year-old brother Hunter in Shaunavon, Saskatchewan, a small town of 1,600 near Swift Current...
A long time ago I watched a documentary about poet Emily Dickinson's life and writings. One thing that I never forgot about that film is that she lived at a time when death was regrettably common - and therefore the subject of many of her poems. "How are you doing?" is a polite way of introducing ourselves to each other now. But as I learned in that documentary, this greeting during Dickinson's times meant, "Are you healthy and well and going to be with us tomorrow?" Until modern times, dying co...
I was excited for the Mini Market in Carrington City Park last Tuesday, as it was a chance to see the next generation of movers and shakers in business, in action. I unfortunately couldn’t make it, so reporter Erik Gjovik was my eyes and ears at the event. Erik visited four young entrepreneurs, and there was a common theme among them. They were all inspired by an enterprising adult, in most cases their parents. Liza Steele from New Rockford sold custom greeting cards. Her business was aptly n...
What happens when a group of 20 somethings with nothing to do get together? They have a party. That’s what a group of us in Edgeley did on March 16, 1981. But this was no ordinary party. Yes, it was 41 years ago, but I still think about this party a lot and all the positive energy that made it a success. The first unusual thing about our party was that it was held on a Monday night and it was limited to a guest list of 10. You can about imagine the reactions when everyone found out we were h...
The citizens are restless. They seem to be frustrated with the failure of government to respond or interact with the voters and are looking for options to loosen up the system. Jared Hendrix, GOP Chair of a legislative district in the Minot area, filed a petition with 46,366 signatures to limit the terms of governors and legislators but Secretary State Al Jaeger threw out 29,101, leaving the petitions short of the 31,164 required to get on the ballot. The Secretary of State claimed that...
Today I’m noshing on a summer salad and sipping raspberry tea from inside the Garden Gate, Carrington’s downtown gathering place. The exposed brick walls, tin ceilings and beautiful barnwood details, as well as the wireless internet and music in the background, are all things I appreciate about it. In fact, I suggested that one of my newspaper colleagues spend time here when she came to town a couple of weeks ago. She had a little work to do before our meeting, and I told her it was the ide...
Normally I don’t complain in this space because I see enough of that on Facebook, and quite frankly, it’s disgusting. However, last week the North Dakota State Fair was held in Minot, as it has for many years in late July. People come to the state fair from all over the Upper Great Plains and western Canada to enjoy the various aspects of what North Dakota has to offer. Unfortunately, when most of these people come to Minot, their first impression is construction. Streets are torn up, some str...
Frustrated by the inability of the present two-party system to function, more folks are talking about the creation of a third party thinking that would break the deadlock in Washington. At the outset, let us admit that the present system was designed by the Founding Fathers to keep anything from happening until a massive consensus developed that would move a proposal through two houses of Congress, the president and the Supreme Court. Alexander Hamilton worried about that when the Constitution...
It was in the late 1940s and into the 1950s that I found myself with one more job. A much appreciated job, at that! Along with lawn mowing, helping my dad and stocking shelves in a grocery store, I also worked at the movie theatre. It was a large, well-kept auditorium on Main Street and owners Gottfred and Wilma Olson made sure the place was always open to the public. The movies ran every night and matinees usually on Saturday and Sunday. The reason was twofold. They drew paying customers and...
