Editorial

As the FM Studio Crawl fast approacheth area artists are tidying up their studios and inviting the public to experience where their magic happens. It’s a great opportunity where communities intersect and our diverse creative community is celebrated.

As an artist, I’ll be the first to admit that it’s tough to find your creative foothold. In fact it’s tough to even find the gumption to call yourself an artist. Once you hold that title you may encounter folks snickering at the…

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$6 billion dollars. That is the increase in market share since the world’s largest athletic retailer introduced ads featuring Colin Kaepernick a few weeks ago. Despite early media reports about stock decline and the campaign being a “risk”, it was a very calculated and strategic move. They’re the 18th most valuable brand in the world (between IBM and Verizon) according to Forbes and WSJ. These people are in the business of brand building and part of the reason they hold such a…

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It’s bad enough when his word versus her word regarding sexual assault gets out in a high school hallway, but can you imagine it spreading throughout the national news media? Imagine reliving those events every time you turn on the evening news.

Then the president’s son responds to your trauma by posting a crayon-written meme downplaying your trauma. Can we get any more vile and juvenile? Tact obviously doesn’t run in the family.

Christine Blasey Ford, you have our respect. Outlets…

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Photo by Sabrina Hornung

I had a little bit of gravel-road therapy this weekend, found myself cruising rural Burleigh County and made a pit stop at Lake Mitchell. I contemplated dipping my toes in the water but like a good central Dakotan I just walked along the lake’s edge and around the nearby picnic shelters.

The one thing that caught my eye was a lone forgotten flagpole. The base was a concrete square and each side was embellished with a metal plaque. Each plaque had a different…

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Odds were stacked against survival for The Little Newspaper That Could from Day One. But here it is, 24 years later, and the High Plains Reader still plays a vital role in the culture and fabric of our local and greater communities.

Happy Birthday, HPR!

There’s no greater testimony to the value of a local newsweekly such as the Reader than to simply note its storied journey over the years. HPR no doubt has evolved to become the people’s paper. It’s not a big conglomerate enterprise;…

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There was one quote that really resonated within me in this week’s issue of High Plains Reader and it was part of C.S. Hagen’s “Voting Methods” story. Jed Limke, the man behind the Approval Voting Army said,“...in recent years a certain apathy has seemed to hover over local elections with low voter turnout. Too many people feel their votes don’t count.”

These sentiments echoed through more than the local elections, look at the current state of the nation. It’s easy to…

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by Melissa Martin
melissamartincounselor@live.com 

Each year 44,965 Americans die by suicide, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.www.afsp.org/.

Suicide rates increased in all but one state between 1999 and 2016, with increases seen across age, gender, race and ethnicity, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. www.cdc.gov/.

Forty-six percent of people who died by suicide had a diagnosed mental condition. Common contributing factors…

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On August 14, The Bismarck Tribune reported that “A popular insecticide could be banned for agricultural use.” Popular as it may be I can think of a whole slew of adjectives that would be more appropriate like questionable, deadly, poisonous… after all it is a neurotoxic pesticide.

According to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/, neurotoxic pesticides kill off these pests by targeting their nervous system, but it’s not just limited to invertebrates. They’ve been known to have…

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I’m one of the most well known trans individuals in the Fargo/Moorhead area. This is because I’ve purposely put myself out there as a symbol of visibility. I’m out there to show people that you can be transgender and that you can be happy. I’m also out there to be an open contact that anyone can reach out to with questions or to find resources. In many ways, I’ve become everything that I needed but didn’t have when I was transitioning in this state.

I’m not sharing that to…

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I found myself in Forbes, North Dakota, in search of the local butcher shop. I was working on a collaborative art project at a nearby elder care facility a couple of months ago and was told that The People’s Store in Forbes had the tastiest sausage in all the land. In fact, I heard that it even rivaled that of the famous Wishek sausage, but then again my source may or may not have been from Forbes--a prairie gem with a population of a little over 50. Whenever I’m in that neck of the…

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