Month: November 2013

Giving gifts that will be appreciated

We stood in the Kmart toy department for about 30 minutes, looking for gift ideas. The shopping took time because there were certain toys we knew we couldn’t buy.
We didn’t want any that required batteries, they couldn’t have any liquid or slime inside, nor could there be a chance the toy would easily break. The toys also couldn’t have any kind of military or violence aspect to it — so superhero action figures, which I naturally gravitated toward, were out of the conversation.

Then again, we assured ourselves, the kids receiving these toys aren’t going to be as picky as the kids we know might be. Many of them would be happy just to receive a toy. Heck, just receiving a pack of crayons could be one the happiest moments of their young lives.

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10-loss season means change

Dickinson State head coach Hank Biesiot stands on the sidelines during the season finale and the final Frontier Conference game at Carroll College on Saturday at the Biesiot Activities Center.

We’re a generation or more removed from the last time the Dickinson State football team had a season this bad.

Before Saturday, the Blue Hawks had never lost 10 games in a season.

It marked only the second time since World War II that a DSU football team has finished a season with one win. When the Blue Hawks were still the Savages in 1966 under head coach Orlo Sundree, they went 1-7. Sundree would only last one more season and DSU would go through two other coaches before promoting Hank Biesiot to the head position in 1976.

More than three decades of success followed. Few team records still stand that weren’t set in the Biesiot coaching era.

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Wanted: Revolutionary politicians

Chris Christie was all the rage last week in the eyes of the national media’s political pundits. A Republican reclaiming his governor’s seat by a landslide in the blue state of New Jersey?

If he can do that, he may be the politician with enough moxie to unit a politically divided country, right? Well, at least he was on a single Tuesday night.

When the East Coast woke up the next morning, most media members realized they had actually championed and spoke highly of a Republican for a few hours and spent the rest of the day finding ways to poke holes in the Christie narrative.

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It is worth inviting Obama to North Dakota

In late June, I wrote a somewhat satirical column that generated more praise, criticism, website hits and social media chatter than anything I have ever written.

People still talk to me about it today.

It’s title: “Dear Mr. President, an invitation to visit North Dakota.”

I used sharply pointed — call it snarky, because a few of you already have — humor to breach the subject of why Obama has not visited North Dakota during his presidency and why he rarely, if ever, mentions the state despite all the positive things happening here.

Some people loved it. Others wanted my head on a platter. A few joked that my name is probably on a few watch lists and my application to MSNBC had been thrown in the trash.

But the invitation wasn’t real. I never sent it to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. It was only meant to raise a point.

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Readers encouraged to check out new Press website

The newspaper industry, perhaps more than any other, must keep up with technology in order to stay relevant.

In the early 1900s, we didn’t run any photos and had hundreds of small stories in tiny type jam-packed onto our front page. Photos were commonplace by the mid-20th century but putting a newspaper together was still a tedious process of typewriters and typesetting. By the turn of the century, computer programs had changed the way the industry worked as well as the way newspapers presented themselves.

Think about this: The day after Theodore Roosevelt died in 1919, The Press had a 200-word story that it gave below-the-fold treatment. There was no photo, illustration or anything. Not even an obituary.

Today, that story would have been standing alone on our front page with many of you rushing to our website long before the newspaper arrived at your home the next morning. Some of you would have been directed to the story on our website via an email or text message alert.

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