Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
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A way to be, a way to think and a way to live everyday, unless you plan to move to another planet. It is acknowledged and celebrated Friday, April 22 each year and like the song from around the first Earth Day of 1970 "In the year 2525" by Zager and Evans; 1969 ... "we've taken everything this old earth can give and we ain't put back nothin'." I ask you, all of you, to Google this song of over 50 years ago and listen to every word of it until it finishes. Following that, have a little visit...
It all started 10 years ago with a gray, cable knit sweater, a beautiful hand-knit piece a friend culled from her husband’s closet. “It doesn’t fit him anymore,” she insisted, holding out the neatly folded sweater smelling faintly of lavender, cedar, and mothballs. ”Plus, his ex-girlfriend made it,” she said, pushing the sweater toward me more firmly. When I pulled it over my head, it felt like it’d been mine from the beginning. I brought the beloved sweater with me when I went to Minnesota last fall to care for my father; preparing for...
“If it was not the most important decision in the history of the court,” Justice Stanley Reed observed of Brown v. Board of Education, “it was very close.” The Supreme Court’s opinion in Brown, delivered on May 17, 1954, held segregation in public schools unconstitutional, a decision that paved the way for the removal of racial discrimination from American law. By any measurement, the ruling placed Brown in the pantheon of America’s greatest judicial decisions. Justice Reed, the last of the three Southern members of the court to join Chief...
President Dwight D. Eisenhower's recess appointment of Earl Warren to the chief justiceship of Supreme Court on September 30, 1953, constituted a watershed mark in the history of the court. His leadership of what was decidedly the Warren Court, generated more landmark opinions in American constitutional law than any chief since John Marshall. Chief Justice Warren, it has been rightly said, did more than any jurist in our nation's history to ensure that the law, in W. H. Auden's phrase, "found...
I recommend the seasonal flu — but please allow me to explain. About a week ago, I felt suddenly rundown and weak. I just wanted to lie down. I thought nothing of it at the time. My family is facing some difficulties at the moment, difficulties we all must face now and again — and all of us are getting beat down. But it wasn’t just fatigue. Was it the big C, I wondered? Nope. I’d never tested positive for having COVID-19. Did that dreaded virus finally find a way to feast on my blessed good heal...
My wife of 45 years died six months ago this week. I have been processing her loss ever since. But the American Psychiatric Association now says that I have only six more months to heal myself, and that if I blow the deadline, I should be clinically defined as mentally diseased. It’s not in my nature to use this column for personal business. But the APA’s decision to add “prolonged grief” (defined as one year or more) to its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders strikes me as a ludicrous attempt to reboot natural bereave...
The Supreme Court's landmark ruling in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, the most-celebrated civil rights decision in our nation's history, is a reminder of the unpredictable twists and turns that shape American constitutional law. On May 17, 1954, the court held that racial segregation of children in the public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The court's denunciation of the separate-but-equal doctrine, which had provided the legal foundation for...
I’m a word nerd. Words are fun and games to me, a lifelong writer. I enjoy searching for the right synonym or phrase to spice up an otherwise ordinary article. At the newspaper office, crafting headlines is another form of “word game” to us. From puns and alliteration to acronyms and homophones, we try them all to get readers’ attention. I will say, headlines still aren’t my strong suit, even after seven years in the newspaper business. In the annual North Dakota newspaper contest, we usually g...
Just a note - do the people up here understand they are so different from most of those around the big cities?? I moved here from South Carolina three years ago after my wife died - it's my Norwegian grandparents home from 1905. I put a house on that old site and absolutely love my friends here and the area's beauty. Example - a package was delivered to Sykeston by mistake, and tonight a guy and his daughter drove it all the way up here to me. I am terribly embarrassed I didn't invite them inside - I guess I was just so flabbergasted that I...
Every April, we celebrate Fair Housing Month in honor of the Fair Housing Act that was passed on April 11, 1968. The Fair Housing Act prohibits housing discrimination based on race, color, sex (including gender identity and sexual orientation), national origin, religion, presence of children in the household, and physical or mental disability. North Dakota offers additional state protections of age, marital status, and receipt of public assistance. Open and barrier-free housing contributes to expanded social and economic opportunities for...
Justice John Marshall Harlan was the only dissenter from the U.S. Supreme Court's infamous ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson, in 1896, in which the majority invoked the "separate but equal" test to uphold segregation laws. Justice Harlan's immortal dissent became law in the landmark case of Brown v. Bd. Of Education of Topeka, Kan. (1954), in which the court overturned Plessy and held that "separate but equal" was inherently unconstitutional and a violation of the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection...
I’m glad there’s widespread confusion about what a woman is. I’ve been confused my entire life. In the most basic sense, the difference between a male and a female is that a female has two X chromosomes and a male has an X and a Y chromosome — or, in my experience, a “WHY” chromosome? I was raised an only boy with five sisters. All my sisters ever said to me was: Why did you eat all the graham crackers? Why can’t you stop picking your nose? Why don’t you ever change the toilet paper roll when...
As a kid, I remember going on a mission with the block kids to discover which neighbor had the tallest tree. Given that the village’s population was only 100 people, it didn’t take us long: In less than five minutes, we were able to run from one end of the town to the other. We quickly gallivanted through the streets, looking up at the top of trees trying to judge which one felt taller. We confirmed our tallest tree suspicions when we snuck up onto a neighbor’s roof on the corner of town and saw that the tree in my yard stuck out above all t...
If I could, I think I'd wake up with the sun. There's nothing better than rising with the sun as it streams through the west window of my bedroom. This time of year, I'm usually still in a stupor from the time change, as the first weeks of Daylight Saving Time have me waking up and preparing myself for the day in darkness. After a long winter like we've had this year, those early mornings of pitch blackness zap the energy right out of me. That's why I'm watching the bill before Congress to elimi...
A tiny portion of my "day job" at a farm-and-home cooperative involves writing radio commercials and on-hold phone messages. More often than I like to admit, I get stuck for a closing zinger and settle for trite sentiments, such as "Let our friendly staff help make this your best hunting season/New Year/spring ever!!" (Note to self: next spring, remember to try something dignified like "Please, please make your money quit hibernating!") But I really do hope my readers enjoy the best spring...
Not all landmark Supreme Court decisions are admirable. Some are frankly infamous, including Plessy v. Ferguson. In 1896, in Plessy, the court constitutionalized racial segregation in the South. The court’s opinion plundered Black Americans’ newly confirmed rights “guaranteed” by the 13th and 14th Amendments, relegated them to second-class citizenship and imposed a legal stamp of inferiority, denying their humanity and assuring anguish and humiliation. So much for the myth of wise, dispassionate Supreme Court justices, atop Mt. Olympus...
Just when I was planning to get one, the tombstone market turned to dust and everyone has to wait for memorial stones because the supply line died before we did. All we can say to bereaved friends, if any, is "be patient". I am not sure if the Scriptural suggestion to "be content" applies or not. How can one rest in peace when the supply of tombstones won't be ready for 20 years? Will there be any real closure until that stone is put in place? If family is dispersed, who will take charge? All...
Points to ponder; Gas price high? Not really, the price of gas has been the same since 1963 when I started driving, three gallons of gas for one hours labor. It took a little looking but there were jobs in town for .75/ hour (not on the farms where I was) and gas was .25 . in 1969 minimum wage went up to $1.25 and that's about what anybody paid, and gas was .38 . Now it's $4.00 when I filled this morning and there's $12.00 jobs. One of the problems is in terms of hours to pay for things, it comes out to a ten fold increase since the days of...
“At no point does the article (“None injured in crash,” March 14) explain the car in front of me slammed on the breaks [sic] just before reaching an icy patch and lost control. In an attempt to avoid a severe crash, I slowed and applied the breaks [sic] gently to try to avoid also loosing [sic] control. Fortunately I was able to avoid the car in front of me, which I believe saved the two cars behind me from also being involved in the accident. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to avoid the oncoming individual. “Luckily no one was injured. In this c...
Vladimir Putin’s infliction on the Russian people of a second Iron Curtain has demonstrated more effectively than any number of seminars and lectures possibly could the critical importance of freedom of the press to governmental accountability. Putin’s nationwide censorship of any news or reports that contradict his characterization of the lie that he is “de-nazifying” Ukraine, enforced by a brutal 15-year prison sentence for violators, has plunged most Russians into a state of darkness and ignorance. Most know very little about the horrific, u...
The Pentagon Papers case, which proceeded through the federal courts at record pace, presented the U.S. Supreme Court with a sharply drawn question of great importance to the First Amendment: Does the judiciary have authority to prohibit publication of information whose secrecy is characterized by the president as critical to the nation's security? On June 30, 1971, the Supreme Court rendered an historic decision that upheld the right of the New York Times, Washington Post and, eventually,...
Next week I get the benefit of two nights out in a row. Both the New Rockford and Carrington chambers of commerce and economic development organizations will be hosting their annual banquet/meetings. Carrington’s joint annual meeting is first on the calendar, with the social, dinner and presentations scheduled for Thursday, March 24 at the Chieftain. New Rockford gets its night to shine on Friday, March 25. After three straight years of not hosting one in New Rockford, this year the New Rockford...
My mother and father keep our old photos in their hall closet in a sturdy old Pabst Blue Ribbon box. Sifting through old photos is a glorious experience — one, we now know, that relieves aches and pains by calming the brain, according to a recent study. The last time I looked through the box with my mother, we came across a black-and-white photo of a little girl. That photo was taken 82 years ago, when the girl had her whole life before her. She didn’t know yet that one of her sisters would be...
Thomas Jefferson once observed that fearless, independent newspapers were indispensable to the American experiment, and to "the people's right to know." Without an informed citizenry to scrutinize, question and challenge governmental acts, the great goal of holding government accountable to the citizenry and the rule of law would surely fail. The U.S. Supreme Court embraced Jefferson's premises in its landmark ruling in The New York Times v. Sullivan (1964) by protecting the press from libel...
Their bravery inspires. As I sit safely in the cozy office in my home writing this column, the people of Ukraine are greeting Putin's massive military invasion with incredible defiance and courage. Their president, Volodymyr Zelensky, reportedly rejected an offer to evacuate to safety in the U.S. - despite reports that Putin hired mercenaries to assassinate him. His response: "I need ammo, not a ride." Zelensky's story reads like a Hollywood screenplay. He was born to Jewish parents in the Russi...
