October 11th, 2017
Deloris Boehmer is my last living aunt. She’s the only remaining member of my parents’ generation in our family. She’s 88, and lives in Edmore, North Dakota, about 40 miles northeast of Devils Lake.
She’s got a pretty nice house in Edmore—used to be the Lutheran parsonage. She and my uncle Leonard—my mother’s brother—bought it about 40 years ago and moved off the farm into town.
But they didn’t quit farming. The farm’s just a few miles out of town and they kept the…
October 11th, 2017
In 2011, Hess Corporation announced a generous $25 million grant to improve North Dakota’s public education system. The grant, called Succeed 2020, aimed to improve student preparation for college and careers and ensure more successful transitions from K-12 to college and/or careers for all North Dakota students. Funding supported efforts through the 2012-2017 academic years.
To accomplish its bold goals, Succeed 2020 specifically aimed to increase ACT scores, decrease developmental or…
October 4th, 2017
Next week I’ll join about 90,000 or so of my best friends on one of North Dakota’s favorite days, hunting pheasants on the opening day of Pheasant Season. I thought I might share here some of the poetry of Paul Southworth Bliss, my favorite North Dakota poet, in honor of the occasion.
Paul Bliss was no outdoorsman. Born in Wisconsin in 1889, educated at Harvard, a World War I veteran, he rose to the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army.
Bliss began his professional career as a newspaper…
September 27th, 2017
By Jill Westerholm
jillwesterholm@gmail.com
The latest Affordable Care Act repeal by Republicans, the Graham-Cassidy bill, is reportedly now being pulled due to the good sense of John McCain, Rand Paul & Susan Collins expressing that they would not vote for the bill. A nightmare averted, for now, once again.
Eight years they've had to work on a replacement and they don't have anything. They just don't want an Affordable Care Act; repeal but no replace. Isn't that the best evidence of…
September 20th, 2017
By Robert Franklin, Esq.
parents@nationalparentsorganization.org
In North Dakota, a child’s chances of spending meaningful time with each parent following divorce have less to do with his parents than what county they divorce in.
For example, there’s a whopping 100% difference in joint custody between Grand Forks and Morton counties. Worse, courts are less than one-fourth as likely to order shared parenting as parents are to agree to it.
Those and other worrying facts have come to…
September 13th, 2017
William Prentice, the slickster CEO of Meridian Energy, which wants to build an oil refinery 2 ½ miles from Theodore Roosevelt National Park, blew a bunch of smoke up the ass of a young reporter for The Dickinson Press the other day, and the kid, who’s actually a pretty good writer, wrote a real puff piece about how great the refinery is going to be for western North Dakota. I’ve written about this a couple times. My pieces weren’t puff pieces.
The Bismarck Tribune and Forum…
August 30th, 2017
There’s a little blue-collar resort community at the top of the Van Hook Arm of Lake Sakakawea, a couple hundred trailers and cabins and a bait shop, a small RV park, and a boat ramp.
This spring, an oil company named Slawson Exploration moved in beside the resort, and with its huge machinery, began clearing a 25 acre site at the top of the boat ramp, which will be home to what now looks like an 8-well oil pad. The site is just a few hundred yards from the park and the homes in the…
August 23rd, 2017
“Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.” – Edmund Burke
“The history of the twentieth century has taught us that people who are rendered permanently superfluous are eventually condemned to segregated precincts of the living dead or are exterminated outright.”
– Richard Rubenstein
“To the Nazi economists goes the credit for working out a system of living on their debts. They realized the implications of the well-known fact that a dishonest debtor has all the advantage over…
August 16th, 2017
A few months ago I wrote about the long, strange saga of Jason Halek, the fellow who dumped 800,000 gallons of poisonous oilfield brine down an abandoned oil well south of Dickinson. Back in April of this year, he pleaded guilty to three felony violations of the U.S Safe Drinking Water Act for those crimes he committed in late 2012 and early 2013.
Jason was scheduled to be sentenced to 24-30 months in a federal prison on July 31.
Well, July 31 has come and gone, and no sentencing yet.…
August 5th, 2017
Of all the sleazy companies to show up in North Dakota’s oil patch in the nearly ten years since the Bakken Boom began, the sleaziest of them all has to be Meridian Energy, the company proposing to build an oil refinery called the Davis Refinery just three miles from Theodore Roosevelt National Park. I wrote about them a few months ago. Here’s an update.
Normally, when a company wants to build a large energy plant, like a refinery, it applies for a siting permit from the North Dakota…
__293px-wide.jpg)
__293px-wide.jpg)
_(1)__293px-wide.jpg)
__293px-wide.jpg)
By Alicia Underlee NelsonMore than 1,000 pro-worker events are planned for Thursday, May 1 across the country, including rallies in Fargo-Moorhead, Grand Forks, Minot and Jamestown. East Grand Forks and Bismarck will host protests…
From concerts and car shows to Japanese art and Juneteenth celebrations, there's so much going on around the region this summer. This year's High Plains Reader Summer Events Calendar is back and bigger than ever. It's packed with…
June 21, 11 a.m. - 11 p.m.Fargo Theatre, 314 Broadway N., Fargo“We Watch Shudder,” Fargo’s favorite horror podcasters, bring on the darkness during the longest day of the year. The Darkest Day of Horror Film Festival features…
By John Strandjas@hpr1.com One description that perhaps aptly describes the mental state of many lately is that they feel they are attached to a string. Or several strings. Call it the notion that people are played like puppets,…
By Ed Raymondfargogadfly@gmail.comFor sale: White House in D.C. housing dung beetles and giant leechesI suspect someone close to Donald Trump has read “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,”because the Trump administration is…
By Rick Gionrickgion@gmail.com Holiday wine shopping shouldn’t have to be complicated. But unfortunately it can cause unneeded anxiety due to an overabundance of choices. Don’t fret my friends, we once again have you covered…
By Rick Gionrickgion@gmail.com After a very inspiring conversation with Kayla Houchin of Sonder Bakehouse a few weeks ago, I decided that it’s an appropriate time to write a column about some of the sweet people who are involved…
Mooncats and Pert Near Sandstone play Empire TheatreBy Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.comThe MoonCats describe themselves as “Americonscious Campfire Folk.” They have a clear acoustic folk sound with a sense of whimsy — think…
By Greg Carlsongregcarlson1@gmail.com Filmmaker Antonella Sudasassi Furniss constructs an engaging sophomore feature with “Memories of a Burning Body,” selected by Costa Rica to be entered for consideration as a possible Oscar…
By Raul Gomezraul@hpr1.com Minutes before Modern’s Celebration of Life opened its door at the Sons of Norway, I was fiddling with the bar computer, trying to pull up the playlists of Modern’s work I had set aside for the…
By John Showalterjohn.d.showalter@gmail.comHigh Plains Reader had the opportunity to interview two mysterious new game show hosts named Milt and Bradley Barker about an upcoming event they will be putting on at Brewhalla. What…
By Annie Prafckeannieprafcke@gmail.com AUSTIN, Texas – As a Chinese-American, connecting to my culture through food is essential, and no dish brings me back to my mother’s kitchen quite like hotdish. Yes, you heard me right –…
By Sabrina Hornungsabrina@hpr1.comNew Jamestown Brewery Serves up Local FlavorThere’s something delicious brewing out here on the prairie and it just so happens to be the newest brewery west of the Red River and east of the…
By Ellie Liveranieli.liverani.ra@gmail.com There appear to be differences in the incidence of mental illnesses between men and women. For example, women are more likely to be diagnosed with depression, post-traumatic stress…
By Alicia Underlee NelsonProtests against President Trump’s policies and the cuts made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are planned across North Dakota and western Minnesota Friday, April 4 and…
By Vern Thompsonvern.thompson.nd7@gmail.com Our trucking business has me driving almost daily from gas plants in western North Dakota's oil patch to Canada. I haul natural gas liquids (NGLs) products we used to see flared off at…
