The Official Newspaper for Foster County
The Official Newspaper for Foster County
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Another of our extended family has hit the working world. And he was eager to start! That was because his sister was working, and earning some good spending money. He noticed just what she was saving, so he was anxious to do the same. This is my grandson in a suburb of Minneapolis. He’s about to complete his freshman year of high school. He needs a coin or two, especially to conform a medium-sized mountain bike into a motorized bike. This is not a cheap makeover! And, his sister, who will c...
When I was working at the Minot Daily News, I interviewed Sen. Kent Conrad one day about the rise of wind energy in North Dakota. On that day, there was a groundbreaking ceremony for a wind energy project near Velva. At one point during our interview Conrad told me that wind energy has no limit in North Dakota because “we are the Saudi Arabia of wind.” Most of us know that Saudi Arabia has an unlimited oil supply and Conrad’s comment, of course, was that North Dakota has an unlimited wind suppl...
Hollywood makes iconic catch phrases seem easy. Whether it’s McGarrett’s “Book ‘em, Danno” or Vizzini’s “Inconceivable!” in “The Princess Bride,” we take them for granted. But there is a dismaying amount of trial and error behind the relative handful of utterances that fully capture the public consciousness. For example, the magisterial “Make it so” of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the “Star Trek” universe. Early versions of Picard’s command included “That’s what SHE said,” “Pretty please with a...
Eddie Grant, a Harvard Law School graduate and a former third baseman who played for the Cleveland Indians, Philadelphia Phillies, Cincinnati Reds and New York Giants, was the first major league baseball player killed in World War I. In all, seven other major league players lost their lives in the Great War. They are Lt. Tom Burr, plane crash; Lt. Harry Chapman, illness; Lt. Larry Chappell, influenza; Pvt. Harry Glenn, pneumonia; Cpt. Newton Halliday, hemorrhages; Cpl. Ralph Sherman, drowned, an...
It was recently announced that the North Dakota Department of Transportation has OK’d a major road construction project that will turn U.S. Highway 52, from the Canadian border at Portal, all the way to Carrington, into a “super 2,” which means strategic passing lanes will be added. Since April of 2008, there’s been a push to have U.S. 52 four-laned from the border to the four-lane U.S. Highway 2, about 15 miles northwest of Minot. Public meetings were held along the route and not much ever ha...
The drumbeat for abolishing student debt is growing as students and former students feel the financial crunch of poor employment and increasing inflation. Forty five million (45,000,000) Americans owe $1.6 trillion ($1,600,000,000) for federal student loans. But there is a lot of hidden debt acquired from private sources that is impossible to calculate. We know it is big. Twenty-four percent have student debt, leaving 76% without student debt. The political facts tell us that 24% will be eager...
It was about this time of year, 22 years ago, when I was on the precipice of my future. There I was, in my second semester of university, and my roommate had an epiphany: we should “go away” for the summer, she surmised. She had a poster in hand from the Ponderosa Ranch, an amusement park on Lake Tahoe, Nevada, that was built to celebrate the legacy of the popular western TV show, “Bonanza.” Now this is where many of you, dear readers, will go down memory lane. How many of you watched “Bonanz...
In the past month, there have been a lot of vehicles with Saskatchewan and Manitoba license plates milling around Minot and on U.S. Highway 52. Covid restrictions were lifted April 1 in Canada which made it much easier for Canadians to travel across the border. It’s been a long time coming and Dakota Square Mall in Minot recognized it too with large banners that say “Welcome Back Canadians.” For at least 32 years that I’m aware of, Minot, Grand Forks and Fargo have all been recipients of the...
May being Mental Health Awareness month, it seems appropriate for us to confront an issue that eludes our attention until it strikes home. It is odd that mental health has become a major problem in a country flowing with money and professionalism, both essential for attacking the problem. Nevertheless, Judith Warner writes a lengthy analysis in the Washington Post Magazine about young people: “Over the last several decades, we’ve been seeing an increase in mental health conditions in chi...
Do you, like me, remember the first car you ever drove? Be it legally or illegally, some must remember like I do. It came to my attention about a month ago while I was cleaning out some files here in the office in preparation of moving from this 45-year position. I came upon, in a box of old photos, this one above that I thought I would never find again . . . this only pix of the first car I ever drove in my lifetime . . . a 1931 Dodge Coupe. And, it was an illegal drive. It all happened when I...
There was a photograph in last week’s Kenmare News showing local man Jim Hillestad with his son Kelly and daughter Terri at his birthday party. That’s not so unusual, but what is unusual is that Jim turned 102 in late April. Kelly lives with his dad in Kenmare while Terri flew in from Australia to attend this special event at the Kenmare Senior Citizen Center. According to the North Dakota Department of Commerce, there are 310 North Dakota residents who are 100 or older, that’s up about 100 p...
A lot of people in the Grand Forks area are looking with suspicion at the proposal from a Chinese company offering to build a massive corn-milling plant on the windward side of town. Critics have a number of legitimate concerns but the fear of communism has been pronounced. The “red scare” is back. Being a Christian obedient to the government, I have been trying to find the opportunity to meet the State’s challenge to “be legendary”. I was wondering whether or not the Fufeng controversy would be...
One can make the argument that communication may be the single most important aspect of human existence. I couldn’t agree more. As a professional communicator, I strive daily to communicate as effectively as possible. I’ve found there’s no better way to connect with those who aren’t close enough to visit than through handwritten letters. From soldiers and their sweethearts corresponding during wartime, to close friends spread across the country keeping each other up to date on their lives,...
For the longest time, I would sit and look at my Kenwood KT 6040 AM-FM receiver and wonder what was wrong with it. When I bought it in 2018, it provided radio reception two step above anything else I’d ever known. But in the past year, there’s been some kind of issue. Last week my wife went to visit the grandkids in Rapid City, so I dedicated one of those days to find the problem and fix it. I gave myself an entire day so I wouldn’t have to get into a hurry. That meant taking the system compl...
Well, we’re at it again. It seems that in the case of Senator Ray Holmberg many are rushing to judgment without knowing the circumstances of his sin. According to former students, Ray Holmberg was an excellent Grand Forks teacher and served the State of North Dakota in the senate for 44 years. He was no ordinary senator. He took the challenge seriously and made every effort to put together a biennial budget that was fair to all parts of the state. No One Powerful He had considerable influence o...
This weekend another chapter of the North Dakota Newspaper Association will happen when the Fourth Estaters gather for their annual convention in Bismarck. And, it will be a very special convention for our two newspapers here in Central North Dakota, the Independent and the Transcript at New Rockford. Your publisher/editor of the two publications will take the reins as Association president. Miss Amy will become one of a very few from this area to serve in this position. She has spent a lot of...
There’s a small town in the gooseneck of Ward County called Donnybrook. It’s common knowledge locally that the town was named for the Donnybrook Fair in Ireland. Today Donnybrook is a district in Dublin. A few days ago, I discovered there is another Donnybrook and it’s in Western Australia. This Donnybrook is a town of 3,000 people situated 130 miles south of Perth. It’s home to Western Australia’s apple industry. Although there is no commercial apple production at Donnybrook, N.D., and the p...
“This here emergency meeting is called because Little Jimmy thinks he can make our town a spring Mecca for the flocks of robins that come in freezing weather,” Chairperson Ork Dorken announced as he looked over the 11 electors that made up the Community Homeland Committee. The other two people in town refused to participate, but took up shelter in the topless old church basement in case the Ukraine thing got out of hand. It was now well into the spring and the electors were huddled around the...
“Due to supply chain issues, your February order of snow has now been delivered. We apologize for any inconvenience.” When I saw that meme on Facebook last week, I had to share. It perfectly captured the current situation we’re in. Too little, too late. Too much, too soon. Supply chain issues have affected everything from pre-punched paper for calendars to crystal tie-dye hoodies for the NR-S senior class. We had a restaurant owner tell us she has a hard time ordering food. She doesn’t want to a...
If you haven’t heard about this yet, there is something unique going on at Linton High School and my friend Jay Schmaltz is largely responsible for it. Jay and I go back a lot of years when I was deep into newspapers and he was deep into radio. And Jay being from Nekoma, I’d see him in Langdon occasionally when I was operating the newspaper there. At one point I convinced him to come on board at the Cavalier County Republican where he became a sports writer. I think, however, Jay got his claim t...
The Democratic-NPL party will be honoring the legacies of Governors William Guy, Art Link and George Sinner at a fifth annual raucous party in Bismarck on May 7th. On behalf of former lieutenant governors – at least Wayne Sanstead and me - I am boycotting the event, tired of being treated as the expendable appendix or tonsil of body politic. The government wouldn’t fall but just hobble along without our traditional back-up for the governor. Governors never back-up even though that’s reaso...
This is being written last Tuesday as the first of the many inches of snow predicted begins to fall. It reminds us of other April storms that have drawn our attention away from spring. And it looks like this is going to be a doozy of a storm if the weathermen all say it is to happen. All of which places us weekly newspapers in winter storm areas in a predicament. We only have so much time and much to do. . . with hopes of fielding another consecutive issue for our subscribers. So, with that...
When I signed on to write a weekly column for this newspaper, part of the agreement was that I write about current events, history, sports figures, etc., all with a North Dakota tie, sometimes deviating to states or provinces bordering us. This week, I’m compelled to change that theme because of something I saw on TV that was absolutely mind boggling. It was so stupid that it was shocking. Stew Peters is a conspiracy theorist who has a TV show and there was endless fiction coming out of this g...
My wife of 45 years died six months ago this week. I have been processing her loss ever since. But the American Psychiatric Association now says that I have only six more months to heal myself, and that if I blow the deadline, I should be clinically defined as mentally diseased. It's not in my nature to use this column for personal business. But the APA's decision to add "prolonged grief" (defined as one year or more) to its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders strikes me as a...
I’m a word nerd. Words are fun and games to me, a lifelong writer. I enjoy searching for the right synonym or phrase to spice up an otherwise ordinary article. At the newspaper office, crafting headlines is another form of “word game” to us. From puns and alliteration to acronyms and homophones, we try them all to get readers’ attention. I will say, headlines still aren’t my strong suit, even after seven years in the newspaper business. In the annual North Dakota newspaper contest, we usually g...
