A Community Moment

Friday is the day we let our collective hair down and throw our hands up in the air to celebrate HPR’s 14th birthday.

You are invited!

The party begins with an all-ages event at the Plains Art Museum at 7:30. Then at 9:30, the 21-plus crowd moves over and up to The Aquarium. There will be a cash bar at both venues for 21+ with ID.

We’ve been anticipating this party for a long time, just as we are already planning a huge bash for next year’s 15th birthday celebration. But, back to this year, the music lineup is exceptional. The crowd will be colorful and will know how to party, we guarantee.

Folks attending the Plains Art Museum event from 7:30 to 9:30 Friday will experience a quality set of music that will be absolutely magical in that incredible space. Sleeping in Gethsemane starts the night off with an acoustic set.

The Palest Blue is coming to Fargo just for our birthday party--again--and he’ll be launching his new CD this weekend as well.

Brenda Weiler will headline the Plains event with a half hour set that will stun you, and that will mesmerize you, as always, for at least a few days.

The party cranks up more than a few notches when it moves over to The Aquarium, above Dempsey’s, at 9:30. Carl Clinton and the Great Divide open the night up there. They were the cover of last week’s HPR.

Jeremy Messersmith (this week’s cover) comes to Fargo from Minneapolis to deliver HPR’s special gift back to the community, with an hour-long set that will raise the benchmark, and that will leave an indelible mark on your psyche.

South Moorhead’s notorious Scratch Dungeon then has more than an hour and a half to raise the roof to the sky if not farther. Which, we predict, they will. They always have.

The Reader’s birthday parties are en route to becoming one of those annual experiences that somewhat mark the passage of time. A noteworthy moment. A community moment.

The first issue of the High Plains Reader was dated September 8, 1994. It was out of Grand Forks. Peter Ryan was its publisher and Ian Swanson the editor. Len Schmid was design editor.

As we understood it, they did one issue the old-fashioned way, i.e. cut and paste wax layout onto actual pages. By the next issue two weeks later, those college upstarts laid the Reader out entirely with the computer.

They were ahead of their times in many regards, and North Dakota so desperately needed a publication such as the High Plains Reader.

Ownership changed in December 1996. HPR shortly thereafter went full color and soon was published weekly.
We take pride in the fact that HPR is homegrown, all original, locally made and produced.

We take pride in the place we have established in public debate and the voice we provide our community at that table.
The Reader serves as something of a guidance device for folks who don’t mind thinking out of the box, especially when it comes to collective reinvention of a better tomorrow.

We love the people. We love where we are at. We love and embrace the opportunity to engage and to participate, and to shape the future we want.

Our community has a stake in that future. Our extended family has a vested interest in that future. Our shared voice can help us all have the quality of life we want and deserve.

It’s our estimation HPR’s extended family numbers something like 20,000 people week in and week out. We publish an average of about 9,000 papers weekly. Those papers go to Grand Forks, East Grand Forks, Crookston, Fargo, West Fargo and Moorhead. The paper is distributed on every campus in the region. HPR has the fifth highest circulation in North Dakota.

No one else can make those claims. The Reader has good reason to celebrate 14 years. We all do. It’s a community thing and it’s our community.

So, by all means, join up with HPR Publisher Raul Gomez and me Friday night for a bit of fun and celebration. Meet some of our staff, contributors and advertisers.

Mostly, though, meet each other. Get to know each other. Feed off your special connection to each other via The Reader and then toast to the selfless collective effort of hundreds of people to fuel into a better future The Little Newspaper That Could.