Opinion
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Letters: Maintaining respect - Carrington Cemetery
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...
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What's on your summer reading list?
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...
Upside Down Under: Sadly, two more newspapers are gone. . .
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...
Guest: A day to honor our war dead
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 k...
May we talk about mental health?
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...
Experience: couldn't breathe, so called EMS
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....
Upside Down Under: North Dakota's newest communities. . .
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 n...
Growing kindness and gratitude
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...
Upside Down Under: Ghosts of North Dakota. . .
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 ab...
Perspective: Meeting the state's greatest need: trees
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...
Letters: Legislative session strengthens N.D. insurance industry
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 chaos to calm in five days
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...
Upside Down Under: 'End of the Rope' movie. . .
There’s a new movie showing in North Dakota theaters that was filmed here in the state. It’s called “End of the Rope,” and is about a farm family in McKenzie County that mysteriously...
Guest: The incredible life of bees
It’s an excuse I’ve been dreaming of: A reason to NOT mow my lawn. A “No Mow May” movement is afoot to nurture our bee population for a good reason: bees are incredibly important to our own...
May Day, May Day
Where did the month of April go? That’s what I find myself wondering. So much for April showers. May we please get May flowers anyway? Surely the April snow had enough moisture in it to help them...
Upside Down Under: Another 'rare' animal shows its face
Two weeks ago while I was watching huge chunks of ice pass by and the Des Lacs River quickly rise to flood stage, I saw a fur-bearing animal on the water trying to swim upstream. I was able to get...
Guest: Take our Daughters and Sons to Work Day
“Junior, this year to prepare for ‘Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day’ I want to teach you about all the taxes that you’ll have to pay as a working adult.” “What are taxes, Dad?...
Cash is still king
We said goodbye to the Golden Stratus last week. The 2005 Dodge Stratus that was supposed to last through all three teenage drivers in our household was hauled away to the scrapyard. When I started wo...
Upside Down Under: North Dakota, more diverse than you think, Part II
When looking at farm and ranch statistics from the USDA Census of Agriculture, a person could take all day picking apart the various numbers, crops, livestock and even ag processing. There are farms...
Guest: Hospice care for cars
My car is currently in hospice. I’m trying to keep it comfortable and provide a reasonable amount of care, but I’ve accepted that it’s probably approaching the end of its life. With the expenses...
COVID: my journey to hell and back
A good friend of mine, some 50 years ago, was a basketball coach for a team I covered for my newspaper. Having just won an important district game over a tall and talented opponent, I told him,...
Upside Down Under: North Dakota, more diverse than you think
It seems that every time we see information about North Dakota agriculture, it’s about the 11 crops that the Ag Department maintains as No. 1 in the nation. In one sense it paints a good picture...
Voices: Some alternate resources for school lunch
Regarding the controversy over school lunch funding in North Dakota: it makes me physically sick when I hear about children whose family hasn’t paid the lunch bill, and thus are given a cheap meal different than the rest. No child should be...
Tax Day Wordplay
“Death, taxes and childbirth! There’s never any convenient time for any of them,” writes author Margaret Mitchell. I second that, and I will add blizzards to the list, especially after the...
Upside Down Under: There's value in vacant buildings. . .
Last week’s article was about a unique recycling of wood from grain elevators. This week it’s closer to home, maybe even in your own back yard. There are vacant buildings in all 53 counties in...
