The Official Newspaper for Foster County
The Official Newspaper for Foster County
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You likely paid 94 cents for this newspaper. It's not enough. Remember this number: 94 cents. It's the number I'm repeating as I work with your newspaper in the coming months as part of a national experiment to help save local news. That number, 94 cents, is how much it costs you as a subscriber to get this paper every week with your $49 in-state annual subscription. 94 cents. A Twix and a bottle of pop – both machine-produced within seconds – each cost over $2 at a gas station I recently stoppe... Full story
Lately, there have been a number of lists that have surfaced about who the most famous North Dakotan may be. There are several separate lists from Sports Illustrated to Forbes, but one thing is clear, on every list except for one outlier, the No. 1 person is the same – Josh Duhamel. Duhamel was born in Minot. His ancestry is German, and smaller amounts of Norwegian, French-Canadian, English, Irish, and Austrian (his last name is very common among Francophones in the world). Duhamel is an a...
I’ve heard it said that things happen in threes, especially tragedies, deaths and doses of Pepto Bismol after a big Tex-Mex dinner. My own three defining experiences over the past few weeks can’t be described as tragedies, per se, so I’ll refer to them as catastrophes, instead. First was/is the great Graves dishwasher incident, or saga, or ongoing fiasco. In our home, we tend to hang on to appliances until they die of natural causes–and sometimes we invoke extreme resuscitation measure...
For the first time since I’ve been in business, I had to file an insurance claim. The electricity went out in Carrington during a severe thunderstorm the night of Monday, June 17. When Independent staff came to work Tuesday morning, they discovered that some of our office equipment was not working properly. The main office printer wouldn’t turn on, so they made the call to Central Business Systems, the company that maintains our printer. It turns out that the surge protector box had done its job...
A year ago Heber Jeffs was sentenced to five years in a Piute County, Utah court for first degree felony kidnapping of a 10-year-old girl he previously had in his care. When the girl’s mother sought to take her child back, Jeffs refused and fled Utah. He was later arrested in Minot, then extradited to Utah to face charges. Jeffs is the son of Warren Jeffs, the imprisoned leader of the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It was apparently a revelation from t...
Thank God Willis Haviland Carrier invented air conditioning — for the most part. Before air conditioning, the heat drove us outside and brought us together. Friends sought the shade of trees or a refreshing dip in a lake or river. On the hottest nights, whole families brought their blankets and pillows to riverbanks, where it was cool. In the evening, neighbors sat on their large front porches, enjoying a cool breeze as they sipped lemonade and told stories. Even in the 1970s, when I was a k...
With the state primary season concluded, the forms of messaging statewide candidates used leading up to June 11 is curious. Likewise, the steady drumbeat we hear from local and state governments to move public notices to government websites, along with the decisions some state agencies make in bypassing legacy media to publicize state programs. As the executive director of the North Dakota Newspaper Association (NDNA), and also a community newspaper publisher, the requests for free coverage by...
There was some new information that came out last week regarding the implementation of nuclear energy in Saskatchewan. Sask Power released a statement saying it has made significant progress in its search for a host site for the province’s first Small Modular Reactor facility and it is seriously close to the North Dakota border. The SMR is actually a small nuclear reactor and after studying this for at least four years, Sask Power has whittled it down to two sites, both near Estevan, Boundary D...
In response to the article written by Leasa Lura in the June 10th, 2024, edition of The Foster County Independent. It was stated, “During their last meeting on Tuesday, June 4th, the board heard about a contract Garrison Diversion officials say was signed by road superintendent Nate Monson for road blading during the construction of the pipeline. Commissioner Alan Scanson said that the commission was unaware of the contract and that Monson would not have the authority to sign it.” The Foster County Commission wants to clarify that the Foster Co...
“It’s like going to a family reunion where they all actually like you.” “You would never have known it was their first time hosting a convention.” “That is one of the best, most beautiful rooms I’ve ever stayed in. It’s right up there with resorts in big cities.” That’s what members of the Fraternal Order of Eagles had to say about their time in New Rockford and Carrington this past weekend, as New Rockford Aerie 2923 hosted the Dakota State Convention. In total, more than 200 people from across...
It’s been just short of a month, but it appears the hype isn’t backing down regarding direct flights from Bismarck to St. Pete/Clearwater, Fla. Since May 15, Allegiant has added this flight twice a week, on Wednesday and Saturday. Numerous people are talking about this and even though it gets hot in the Tampa Bay region during the summer, those flights continue getting booked. Maybe it’s such a “hot” topic because the flights are cheap right now as an introduction. You can get a one-way r...
In 1974, when I was 11, I flushed an apple core down the toilet. You see, my father had remodeled our basement into a family room with a powder room. Always looking to save a buck — he had six kids to feed on one income — he bought the cheapest toilet he could find. It never did work right, and since we couldn’t afford a plumber, my father spent much of his spare time unclogging it. Armed with this knowledge, then, it’s remarkable I did what I did. One Sunday morning, after chomping on a large...
This primary season has been quite the experience. On one hand, it’s positive to see so many North Dakotans interested in running for political office. We’re seeing primary challenges in both state and local government races, which means voters have choices in who they want to represent them over the next few years. On the other hand, more candidates means more political advertising. Citizens have started write-in campaigns, and announced their candidacy in newspapers, radio, TV and all ove...
Back in the 1990s when I lived in Langdon, I made frequent trips to Winnipeg, sometimes twice a week and most often took care of business, ate meals, stayed in hotels and attended football games in Winnipeg’s west end. Apparently, that part of town has changed dramatically since the ‘90s and nobody seems to know what to do about it. Crime, which was always restricted to the downtown area and almost always at night, has shifted. The crime rate in the west end has increased dramatically and des...
Now that two of my daughters are away at college and the one still at home basically views me as an ATM in an unfashionable neighborhood, I’ve tried to find myself a hobby. Since I’m not interested in activities that involve getting out of bed before noon on a Saturday, that pretty much rules out most manly-type-outdoorsy stuff that would require me to sweat profusely in a tent, clean an animal carcass or have one of my friends pluck a tick from a region of my anatomy that I can’t reach. Inste...
Over May 23-25, I attended my third North Dakota State Track and Field Meet for the New Rockford Transcript as a photographer. The first state track meet I ever covered was the year my stepbrother, Kaden Jensen, was a senior. This was the first time Kaden had ever competed at the state level as well. Kaden made the podium for three-of-four events that year. In his individual events, he took second place in long jump, seventh place in high jump and ninth place in triple jump. He also ran as the a...
As many of you know, there’s been a push to have recreational marijuana legalized in North Dakota. In April, supporters submitted a petition to the secretary of state to get it on the November ballot. Now, supporters need to find 16,000 valid signatures by July 8 to make it happen. Should they get the signatures, we’ll see it on our ballots when we vote in November. But it doesn’t appear this will be rubberstamped even though medical marijuana is already legal in the state. They’ll most likely...
It was the first time in my childhood I had an excuse for coming home late for dinner, but nobody — not even the cops — would listen. In the summer of 1972, when I was 10, Tommy Gillen and I built a dam in the creek on the other side of the Horning Road railroad tunnel. We’d been building up the dam for days to create our own three-foot pool in which we chased after crayfish and minnows — our own cool spot to while away the hot summer afternoons. We’d just completed adding another row of blocks...
GUARDS NEEDED! We are at crunch time!! We are in need of SEVERAL more guards!!! Accepting full- and part-time applicants, hours are flexible! Teenagers, the Carrington Community Pool needs your help! This is my third summer as publisher of the Independent, and I’ve seen a similar scene play out every year. There are also some open coaching positions in New Rockford, and seemingly every local business needs one, a few or many workers to fill their roster. The popular job site, Indeed.com, c...
Anyone who has studied North Dakota history knows that Pembina was the first settlement in what is now North Dakota in 1797. But there’s a lot about Pembina that isn’t common historical knowledge. Most of this history can be found in the Pembina State Museum and it proves that Pembina, and the surrounding area have had a colorful past that actually goes back long before Dakota Territory existed. One example is there is reference to the Red River ox carts that transported goods from St. Paul to...
Ida Ayres never served a day in the armed forces, but at 95, she knows plenty about the sacrifices of war. “Through six wars, I have been the daughter, sister, wife, mother and grandmother of family members who served, or are serving, their country,” Ida told me. During World War I, Ida’s father, Sam DiRenna, fought for the Italian army. DiRenna, who was born in a small town near Naples, was captured by the Germans and spent 13 months in a concentration camp. The German’s branded his forehea...
Our job as journalists is to keep citizens informed about what matters most and hold our government officials accountable for the actions they take. Some days we have it all figured out. Other days, not so much. This past week, we fell a bit short. An article printed on the front page of the May 13th edition of the Independent missed the mark. In fact, it was one of those articles worthy of winning “The Devil Make Me Do It” award. (Yes, that used to be a real award in the NDNA Better New...
A year after an announcement was made to paint murals on the side of a downtown Minot grain elevator, it appears the project is going forward. Australian artist Guido Van Helten was in Minot recently to survey the premises and get a better idea of what exactly he will be doing. A specific timeline hasn’t been announced, but originally, Van Helten was going to work through last summer to paint the elevator. One thing is certain. The Minot Council on the Arts got the right guy to take on this j...
As I sit here admiring my 88-cent container of mustard, I can’t help feeling self-conscious. I know that restaurants advertise their “value menus” and retailers offer no-frills knockoffs of their glitziest products, but I keep picturing the corporate CEOs loathing such concessions as a necessary evil to appease the (ugh!) cheapskate rabble. (“I thought all the franchise owners got the memo to partner with Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and upsell customers the Eternally Happy Meal!”)...
Are you willing to risk your health just to have straight hair? In 2022 a study was released that links the use of specific hair straightening chemicals to an increased risk of uterine cancer. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has since evaluated the study's claims, along with others, and taken steps to ban the sale of these chemicals in the U.S. I agree that a ban should be put in place for the use of these chemicals, a point that needs emphasizing since so many people have no...
