Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Sorted by date Results 51 - 75 of 1064
There’s not enough snow to ride a snowmobile. The trees are bare, and the stubble from last year’s crop is still visible. There’s even water running through the ditches in some areas, in January! It’s “the winter that wasn’t,” some have written. Those that typically revel in that white winter wonderland are depressed to see bare trees and black ground. All I know is that the unseasonably warm temperatures and little to no snowfall have made winter all the more bearable for me. Last year at...
“Mention their name. Tell their story. Continue to live their legacy by remembering them with me.” – Nathalie Himmelrich Allen Stock, publisher of the Foster County Independent for 45 years, left this world on Christmas Day. I first got to know Allen about four years ago. He was a fellow publisher, but he hadn’t attended a newspaper convention or other gathering for several years. I remember him calling to ask if he could rerun articles we had printed in the Transcript, and he requested help se...
Here's a great New Year's resolution: get a pet. As we wrap up a very inflationary 2023, pet shelters across the country are at maximum capacity and they don't have room to house the pets people are turning in. ABC News reports that animals entering shelters began to climb in 2021. During the COVID pandemic, you see, many people adopted pets, but as they began to go back to the workplace, some decided they no longer wanted to care for a pet, so they turned them back in. The past year was...
In his landmark opinion for the U.S. Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison (1803), Chief Justice John Marshall defined the over-arching responsibility of the High Bench: “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is.” Marshall, the greatest name in our constitutional jurisprudence, observed that the Supreme Court is a law court, not a political court, a crucial distinction for a nation founded on the rationale that ours is a government of laws, not men. With notable exceptions, the Court, historically, has bee...
Freedom of speech hits home in New Rockford. Chairman Dave Gehrtz of the New Rockford County Commission has denied Committee members of District 14 Republican Party Larry Danduran, Jason Steidl and Chairman Bill Kuntz to address the commission regarding a hardware issue with our absentee ES&S 450 voting machines. I showed up early for the Dec. 5 meeting to find out why we were denied the opportunity to address the commission. I, Larry Danduran, resident of Eddy Co have served as past member of St. John’s Parish Council, New Rockford Park B...
My heart is heavy this Christmas. My best friend lost her dad a week ago, and one of our daughter’s former classmates died by suicide. I also heard that two gentlemen from my hometown, one the school janitor and another a bus driver, also had passed away. I know that loss is a part of life, but that doesn’t make it any easier. “We are here.” That’s what I repeated to every person I hugged or talked to at the prayer service for my daughter’s classmate. And I listened to his grandma tell us wha...
Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting former President Donald Trump for his efforts to illegally overturn the 2020 election, made a bold and strategically wise move in a rare request to the U.S. Supreme Court to rule “expeditiously” on Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from criminal prosecution. Trump’s assertion that he is above the law represents a profound threat to the rule of law. Smith’s extraordinary request to the High Court to grant “certiorari before judgment,” represents the best opportunity to preserve Trump’s sched...
This letter is in response to the "Eddy County Auditor Resigns" article and her resignation due to the added election challenges regarding the recent controversial issue of voting machines. In the last several elections, I have been the Election Inspector and worked part time under the supervision of Patty. Our county has been very fortunate to have such a competent, knowledgeable, trustworthy and dedicated Auditor as Patty. The election preparation begins in the spring of each election year under the directive of our Secretary of State’s o...
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house It vas da nacht before Santa Clausen und all through the husens Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; No noise makin’schweinhunt unmousen all qviet; The stockins were hung by the chimney with care Oof-da schmnellley foot wearin up the fireplace hanging In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there; Expecten gud old Nicholas would quick be fillin’; The children were nestled all snug in their beds The kinderfolk vas restin qvi...
The idea for a second gym funded by voluntary donations was brilliant. It would be the generosity of donors, who shared the vision of creating another gym, which would provide the resources for the project. One possible path forward would have been to privately fund, design and construct a stand-alone building which could be leased to the school and used by other groups. All the time, money and energy supplied to its creation would be voluntary. The path we find ourselves on is different. Attaching an additional gym to the school shifts the...
I had the great privilege and pleasure, twice, to interview Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on stage at a conference on women and leadership that I organized and hosted. I asked about her heroes. She replied, “You mean, sheroes?” Her answer, a playful and deserving rebuke to my pitiful bias (long since corrected, by the way), reflected the life and career of a trail-blazing woman who had endured waves of gender discrimination, but somehow summoned the fortitude to persevere and triumph, ultimately carving out a judicial legacy that will comma...
Editor's note: This letter was sent to the Eddy County Commission, and was presented during a special meeting on Monday, Dec. 11. Patty and Eddy County Commission, Please accept this letter of encouragement to continue your plans regarding the update to the New Rockford airport. We have a small farm between New Rockford and Bremen and frequently use the airport. Our flight from Maple Lake, Minnesota to New Rockford is generally two and-a-half hours. It would be nice to have a facility that welcomes pilots in New Rockford. Our crew also spends...
Yet another industry has sounded the alarm on workforce shortages and unsustainable working conditions ths past week. This time it's the air traffic controllers, the ones who monitor the nation's airspace and are responsible for ensuring that planes don't collide in mid-air or crash on the landing strip. The headline in the New York Times read: "Drunk and Asleep on the Job: Air Traffic Controllers Pushed to the Brink." The situation is dire, according to veteran air traffic controllers who have...
Here’s an unpleasant holiday statistic: Average Americans are giving significantly less to their favorite charities this year than they did just four or five years ago. Average Americans have long been among the most generous people on Earth. But this year, thanks to an economy disrupted by COVID-19, soaring interest rates and three years of high inflation, many are unable to give. Americans are hurting in their pocketbooks. This past year credit card debt jumped faster than ever before in h...
Unlike Alexander Hamilton, a more famous Founding Father who wrote extensively about the proposed Constitution and championed its ratification – and later became a 21st century cultural icon who made it to Broadway two hundred years after his death – James Iredell had to settle for a mere appointment to the first U.S. Supreme Court. Iredell’s name, image and likeness are nowhere to be found outside of North Carolina, which he had served as a judge on the state’s superior court and as attorney general, before President George Washington named h...
Wishful thinking/daydreaming is fun but keep an honest eye on the horizon. Mom had a saying, "don't let your eyes be bigger than your stomach." Throwing around big numbers, looking for grants and raising taxes is tempting but isn't realistic when held up to the light of long-term past and future demographic change. Anomalies are an unsteady thing. Spend millions on a school addition because there's a big first grade! Well, the 13 seniors last year started as a class of 30 a few years ago. Spend three or four hundred thousand on a show hall! On...
Last night, I got to see "how the sausage is made." As a member of the media, I was invited to watch DPRCA's "The Christmas Show" before anyone else. This time, I was on assignment, shooting photos to document Elliott Schwab's original script coming together on stage. Well, that was part of it. I also wanted to be among the first to see it so I could give you, my dear readers, a glimpse inside the show. It was the one Wednesday night appointment I was happy to take, and it came just in time....
Each year the weekend after Thanksgiving, I sense an innate urge to risk life, limb and public humiliation by festooning the exterior of our home with several hundred C9 incandescent lights. (I'm still resisting the whole LED craze – also known as "the Devil's bulbs.") My mild-mannered next-door neighbor and I always engage in an unspoken competition to see who can get their Christmas lights up first, but since I have the holiday sleeping habits of an inebriated grizzly bear in m...
President Franklin D. Roosevelt wanted to nominate William O. Douglas to the U.S. Supreme Court to fill the vacancy left by the retirement of Justice Louis Brandeis in 1939, but there was a problem: a geographical problem. Douglas, a resident of Connecticut since his days as a Yale Law Professor, and four current justices – Hughes, Stone, Frankfurter and Roberts – were easterners. While no formal requirement for geographical representation on the Court existed, presidents had generally followed a long, if somewhat loose, tradition that sug...
The countdown to Christmas is on. As I write this, December 25 is exactly 34 days away. That means it's time for our annual Winterfest edition of the Transcript, full of all things local for the holidays. I came across a meme posted on the New Rockford Area Chamber of Commerce Facebook page a few days ago that really hit me. It read, "Big companies won't notice your purchase over the next couple months. But small businesses will, and it might even change their life." It's true. Small,...
Editor's Note: This is the third installment in a series. The Transcript is printing four letters per week until all are published. Dear County Commissioners, My name is Kylan Bergrud and I am a third grader at New Rockford-Sheyenne School in New Rockford, N.D. I am writing to you today because I am concerned about gas prices in our town. This is an issue that affects me, my family, and my community because so our community has enough money for food. I believe that this issue is important because our community will not have enough money for bil...
William O. Douglas, the longest-serving Supreme Court justice in American history (1939-1975) – whose outsized life on and off the bench required two autobiographical volumes, and inspired devoted followers and passionate detractors – was at the center of the Court’s most important 20th century rulings. President Franklin D. Roosevelt might have expected as much when he nominated Douglas, just 40 years old, to replace Justice Louis Brandeis, who was forced by a heart attack to leave the Judicial Palace. At the time of his appointment, Dougl...
We've been blessed with beautiful fall days lately. I can't help but smile as I run around doing errands and buzz from one meeting to another. The only thing that could have made this past week better was spending more time outside. With our daylight hours dwindling and the temperatures beginning their precipitous drop, I'm choosing not to dwell on the depressing weather that is destined to come. Instead, I'm focusing on the good things (such as this gorgeous weather) and mindfully practicing...
Editor's Note: This is the second installment in a series. The Transcript is printing four letters per week until all are published. Dear County Commissioners, My name is Kinley Thompson and I am a third grader at New Rockford-Sheyenne School in New Rockford, N.D. I am writing to you today because I am concerned about lunch at school. This is an issue that affects me, my family, and my community because familys don’t have to worry about paying. I believe that this issue is important because kids need good food to fuel there brains. I hope t...
The odds were against Willis Van Devanter ever winning an appointment to the Supreme Court. Widespread talk that he suffered from “pen paralysis,” an affliction that subverted his production, made President William Howard Taft “hesitant” to nominate the Wyoming transplant to fill a vacancy on the nation’s High Court. Various factors, however, convinced President Taft to overcome his reluctance. In 1911, he named Van Devanter to the Court, where he served for 26 years. Geographic considerations persuaded Taft that he needed to add a westerner to...
