Category: News

Free kids books are back: Imagination Library program restarts in Stark County

Jessina Kary said she wasn’t sure what had happened when her son, Isaac, stopped receiving his monthly book through the mail from the Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library program.

She wondered if there had been a mixup in her address after her family had moved. It wasn’t until later that Kary and hundreds of others learned the program had lost its funding in Dickinson, leaving nearly 600 children ages 5 and under without the free book they’d come to expect and enjoy every month.

“He loved it,” Kary said of 4-year-old Isaac. “The first book he ever got was ‘Little Engine That Could’ and we still love that one because he still loves trains.”

Soon, Isaac Kary and kids across Stark County will start receiving their Imagination Library books again.

North Dakota First Lady Betsy Dalrymple helped announce the restart of the program Monday morning at the Dickinson Area Public Library and later read “Roar of a Snore” to a group of children.

“There’s nothing better that a community can do than to help give a gift to your children once a month,” Dalrymple said.

The Imagination Library program was brought back in large part because of a donation of $16,000 by WPX Energy, an oil and gas exploration company with a large stake in the Bakken. Their donation allows children in all Stark County cities except Belfield, which has its own Imagination Library program, the opportunity to sign up for the Imagination Library.

“I really want to tip my hat to them (WPX) for underlining the difference that this program can make in the lives of children,” Dalrymple said.

Imagination Library was launched in 1995 by Dolly Parton, a country music legend and actress, to benefit children ages 5 and under in her home state of Tennessee. It has since expanded to every state, Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. Each month, children receive an age-appropriate book through the mail.

When Dickinson’s Imagination Library lost its funding, several interested parents and educators formed a committee to bring it back. With Dalrymple’s help and support from WPX, the program relaunched in April.

“There’s such a great need for this, so I’m glad we were able to get a committee together and get this going again,” said Lane Talkington, Dickinson’s children’s services librarian

Nearly 1,400 children in Stark County are eligible for the program, and the committee hopes to get every one of them signed up.

Chelsey Scherr, representing the Badlands Reading Council, works for the K.I.D.S. Program in Dickinson and said she sees the difference in children who are read to early and often in a world full of screens.

“What they really need is a parent who gets on the floor, plays with them and reads to them,” Scherr said.

Erica Crespo, part of the committee to help restart the Imagination Library in Stark County, held her 1-year-old son Vaile as they listed to Dalrymple and others speak.

She said she was disappointed when the program lost its funding around the time Vaile was born. Now that it’s back, they are signed up and awaiting his first book.

“It’s just an awesome program to promote literacy in our community,” Crespo said. “So many parents don’t know about this program.”

 

Cattlemen talk market volatility

Larry Schnell, owner of Stockmen’s Livestock Exchange in Dickinson, drew applause from his industry colleagues Friday when he said cattlemen are angered when traders use subtle deviations in the cattle markets and cause major price fluctuations that trickle down all the way to their operations.

“That’s why it’s so hard for us to accept that we should face the consequences of all the trading that takes place under the table, in the dark,” Schnell said. “That’s hard for us to accept. … These people here, they’re not a part of that. They only suffer the consequences of that trade.”

Many from the western North Dakota and South Dakota cattle industries gathered Friday morning at Stockmen’s to listen to Schnell and other industry leaders speak out on problems they see in the cattle markets at a forum hosted by U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D.

Heitkamp, Schnell and five other panelists sat in the Stockmen’s sales ring — where cattle are typically showed for auction — as they discussed market concerns for more than two hours. Other panelists included Bowman rancher Steve Brooks, who is president of the North Dakota Stockmen’s Association; Justin Lumpkin, a U.S. Department of Agriculture marketing officer; Larry Kinev, president of the Independent Beef Association of North Dakota, and cattle buyer Fred Berger, of Mandan.

“What we were talking about here today isn’t, I think, about the high prices or the low prices,” Schnell said after the forum. “It’s about the volatility. It’s about the volatility where the market changes for what seems like no reason whatsoever.”

The managing director of commodity research for the CME Group, which operates the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, said the exchange is months away from fixing issues that cause excess volatility in cattle markets. David Lehman told cattlemen that the exchange, in the next couple of months, will implement market circuit breakers on live and feeder cattle to install limits on how cattle contracts are traded.

He said it should help ensure market integrity. The circuit breakers are intended to keep prices from skyrocketing or bottoming out based on volatile activity in the market regardless of the speed or way people are trading.

“Rather than a hard limit that stops the market, it halts the market,” Lehman said, adding it will trigger if live cattle prices move more than $1.50 during an hour, or $2.25 for feeder cattle.

Ron Volk, a rancher from the Sentinel Butte area, said he understands the reasoning for implementing the circuit breakers but told Lehman he doesn’t believe it’ll be a permanent fix for the market’s instability.

“It seems to me like we’ve got a broken leg and you’re trying to throw a couple Band-Aids on it,” Volk said. “I don’t see it changing anything. It’s prolonging the broken leg. Now instead of putting a cast on, you may have to cut the leg off.”

Lehman said he agreed that “the leg is broken,” but said circuit breakers already help deter volatility in many markets, including oil and precious metals.

He said the circuit breakers are being put in place to limit moments like one that happened last week when 175 feeder cattle contracts — nearly three times the average daily trades made — were traded on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and caused cattle prices to drop significantly.

“That set off a cascade pushing the market down until it found the other bids or offers that could match this 175-lot order,” Lehman said.

The problem, the panel said, is the volume of electronic trading happening by hedge funds or others who normally wouldn’t trade cattle futures, but do so based solely on market deviations.

Schnell believes it’s “nerds writing programs who are looking for an advantage.”

“What some of those algorithms trade on is only the knowledge of the trade, not knowledge of information,” Schnell said. “To us, that’s insider trading.”

Mike Heaton, a McKenzie rancher and member of the Independent Beef Association of North Dakota, said those outside of the cattle and agriculture industries trading live and feeder cattle and causing volatile prices swings in the markets, are comparable to parasites.

“There’s a whole other world out there of people living off of our industry,” he said. “When we get no return on it, they’re like the parasite that I get rid of in my cattle.”

Heitkamp said the Senate Agriculture Committee — of which both she and Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., are members — is holding a hearing about the volatility in cattle markets Thursday in Washington. She said part of the reason for hosting Friday’s forum was so she could get an idea of what North Dakota cattlemen believe are the biggest issues.

“The more this marketplace does not work for the people in this room, the more difficult it’s going to be to manage it,” Heitkamp said. “The more people who pull out, the more irrelevant it is.”

Herman Schumacher, a cattleman from Herreid, S.D., challenged Lehman on the constant cattle market fluctuations and said he believes the issue comes back to hedge funds and the meat packing industry trying to build a greater stake in the market.

“We’re fighting to try and not chicken-ize the cattle industry,” Schumacher said, referring to the influence large corporations have on the poultry trade.

Schumacher said he thought the input cattlemen from the area had at the meeting was beneficial as Heitkamp and others take their issues back to Washington next week.

“The only thing that keeps us separate from them (the commercial meat packing industry) are these cowboys that you had sitting there,” Schumacher said, pointing to chairs behind him.

Missing the ‘life of the party’: Dickinson businessman DJ Charbonneau remembered after cancer claims his life at 42

The happy hour crowd at Liquid Assets bar in Dickinson had a solemn tone for a few moments on Wednesday evening before giving way to laughter, backslapping and storytelling.

The atmosphere was just the way DJ Charbonneau would have liked it.

Charbonneau, the Dickinson businessman who co-owned both Charbonneau Car Center and Liquid Assets, died Wednesday morning at just 42 years old following a 15-month battle with cancer.

“There’ll never be another one like him,” said Brent Haugland, one of Charbonneau’s oldest friends.

Charbonneau, one of Dickinson’s most energetic and bombastic personalities, was diagnosed with appendix cancer in January 2015.

The extremely rare form of cancer initially affected Charbonneau’s appendix before spreading to his liver, colon and peritoneum — the thin layer of tissue covering abdominal organs and the abdominal cavity. Eventually, it reached his lungs and bones, his wife, Michelle, said on Wednesday.

“He was a fighter,” she said. “He was trying to beat it. He did everything he could. Everything. He kept saying, ‘I’m going to beat this.’”

In his final months, Michelle and many of DJ’s friends said he rarely revealed that his health was failing.

“As close as I was with him, he never really let on how he was feeling,” said Jason Fridrich, who co-owned Liquid Assets with Charbonneau. “… He never complained about it. You’d never know. He’d always still have a big smile on his face and we’d chat just like old times.”

Fridrich said one of his best memories happened last November when Charbonneau surprised him at his wedding in Arizona.

“He told me he wasn’t going to be able to make it,” Fridrich said, his voice breaking. “He ended up showing up in Arizona. He had a blast that night. It was so fun.”

Michelle laughed and said DJ was often the “life of the party,” even playing off his cancer for jokes.

She said he’d always tell her “Fireball kills cancer,” referring to the popular cinnamon-flavored  whiskey and DJ’s drink of choice.

“When he went to Houston, they told him he couldn’t drink anymore,” she said. “And when things got worse, he said, ‘See, I told you, Fireball fights cancer.’”

 

Community leader

DJ and Terry Dvorak bought Charbonneau Car Center from DJ’s father, Don Charbonneau, in 2009. Dvorak said Friday that the dealership will remain in the Charbonneau family name “as long as I’m affiliated with it.”

“Don trusted (DJ) and I to carry on the legacy,” Dvorak said.

He said the dealership had seen “a lot of sadness” it the past few days, including from customers who he said would often come in just to see DJ and chat.

“He’s going to be missed,” Dvorak said.

That was made obvious online throughout the week as hundreds of condolence messages were posted to DJ’s Caring Bridge website, and throughout Dickinson’s Facebook community.

Fridrich’s post, “Heaven just became a better place. I am gonna miss you my friend,” was shared by more than 150 people.

“He was just loved by so many,” Michelle said. “The outpouring of people, it’s just crazy. Everybody just loved him. He loved life. He loved to enjoy life.”

DJ was heavily involved in the Dickinson community outside of his businesses.

He was a past exalted rule of the Dickinson Elks Lodge No. 1137 and remained president of the St. Joseph’s Hospital Foundation Board throughout his battle with cancer.

His legacy of giving back to his community will carry on through the Team DJ Memorial Fund, which is being set up to help cancer patients and families in the community.

 

Lasting memories

Friends and family said DJ lived life to the fullest in his final months.

He took several trips, including a family honeymoon trip to the Dominican Republic a year ago — which was initially supposed to be he and Michelle’s wedding trip. While doctoring in Houston in April, he was even able to watch the North Carolina Tar Heels — his favorite team — play in the NCAA men’s basketball national championship game.

“He always kept saying, ‘I’m going to keep fighting until there was no fight left,’” Fridrich recalled. “He knew he had the odds stacked against him, but he was stubborn. Until the last day, he said, I’m not going to quit.”

That stubborn streak was balanced out by DJ’s willingness to help others, his friends and family said.

Matty Lyons, who for several years was the manager of Liquid Assets, said he’ll never forget how DJ “took a chance” on him.

“He believed in you before you believed in yourself,” Lyons said Wednesday.

Lyons, sitting at the bar, pointed behind it and laughed about the time DJ — who Lyons said rarely meddled with the bar’s staff — jumped behind the bar to help on a night when a Liquid Assets customer bought more than 200 shots.

“It’s little things like that you don’t forget,” he said.

Haugland, who said he became better friends with DJ after they both moved back to Dickinson following college, sat next to the bar at Liquid Assets on Wednesday surrounded by friends and colleagues, all remembering DJ’s life.

Just a few feet away, the usual spot at the far end of the bar where DJ often perched sat empty.

Haugland looked ahead quietly and did his best to hold his feelings together.

“He’s one of those people who could always make you laugh, no matter what,” he said. “Always there to cheer you up when you needed him. Always there to laugh and joke. I had a lot of fun times with him. I’ll never forget him.”

DJ Charbonneau’s funeral is at noon Monday at Stevenson Funeral Home with a prayer service at 4 p.m. Sunday. Visitation at the funeral home will be held from 1-7 p.m. Sunday and from 9 a.m to noon Monday.

Hoeven, fertilizer dealers oppose anhydrous restrictions

North Dakota politicians and agriculture leaders say a “reinterpretation” of U.S. Department of Labor rules may lead to one-third of North Dakota’s fertilizer retailers eliminating anhydrous ammonia sales.

U.S. Sen. John Hoeven said he is working with the state’s Department of Agriculture, producer organizations and fertilizer sales dealers to kill the proposed change that would hold 275 small fertilizer retailers in the state and around 3,800 nationwide to the same standards as much larger warehouse wholesalers, thereby raising costs for the retailers and, in turn, farmers.

Hoeven said around 90 North Dakota fertilizer retailers have stated they’d be likely to eliminate anhydrous ammonia sales if the new standards are put in place. Anhydrous ammonia is the primary nitrogen fertilizer used by North Dakota farmers.

Ron Kessel, a sales representative at Helena Chemical in New England, said while his company wouldn’t have to eliminate anhydrous sales, “it would change how we do business.”

Last July, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration released a memorandum titled “Process Safety Management of Highly Hazardous Chemicals and Application of the Retail Exemption,” detailing its revised interpretation of rules for exempting retail fertilizer facilities from the same standards larger fertilizer warehouses are held to. According to the memorandum, the change is tied to President Barack Obama’s executive order to improve chemical facility safety and security following the West, Texas, explosion in April 2013.

“You’ve got people out here trying to farm — it’s a tough time for farmers because of low commodity prices — and they come out with these rules and regulations and say it’ll cost a couple thousands, and that’s not true at all,” Hoeven said.

Gary Knutson, executive director of the North Dakota Agricultural Association, said he’s still waiting for answers for why the changes are necessary, as well as a breakdown of costs associated with the proposed changes.

“Bottom line is, we’re looking for answers yet,” Knutson said.

Hoeven said OSHA and the Department of Labor haven’t been transparent with the costs that would be associated with storage improvements southwest North Dakota retailers would need to make to be in compliance with the reinterpreted rules.

OSHA documents state the cost, on average, would only be around $2,100 per facility. But Hoeven and others vehemently dispute that.

The senator said OSHA denied a freedom of information request sent by state Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring’s office asking about details for how it came to the $2,100 figure.

“That’s not right,” Hoeven said. “It’s going to cost them more than 10 times that.”

Delane Thom, the general manager for CHS Southwest Grain near Taylor, said he figures his company would have to spend more than $100,000 to upgrade its nine anhydrous ammonia distribution sites, and that’s “just the tip of the iceberg.” He added he’ll have a more concrete idea of how much his company would be spending after a third-party assesses its locations for compliance changes.

Should the regulations go through, Thom said Southwest Grain would have no choice but to pass the costs on to farmers, and said discussions would be had about closing some of its satellite anhydrous locations.

“That’s not our intent, but we’ve just got to make a business decision at that point and see if it feasibly makes any sense,” Thom said.

Kessel and other North Dakota’s fertilizer retailers say they already have strict regulations on how they must store and distribute hazardous materials, and the new regulations would force them to pass additional costs along to farmers and producers.

“We want all of employees and our farmers in our local communities to be safe,” he said. “We’re very concerned and cognitive of that. We don’t know that these additional regulations are going to make it any safer without adding a bunch of additional costs to it.”

Kessel said another area of safety concern being raised by retailers is that if some satellite anhydrous retail sites around the state were to close because of the new regulations, it’d create a more direct hazard because many farmers would be putting anhydrous tanks on the road for longer periods of time.

Under North Dakota law, the heavy anhydrous tanks cannot be hauled at more than 25 mph.

“If you actually have nurse tanks being pulled that much further and through that much traffic, I think it’s going to add some safety concerns,” he said.

Thom said he could foresee farmers — some of whom have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars into purchasing their own anhydrous tanks — moving away from anhydrous ammonia and toward urea as their primary nitrogen fertilizer. However, he said, farmers need to use twice as much urea for it to have the same effect as anhydrous ammonia, which could add more costs to his and other businesses.

Hoeven wrote a letter to U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez on April 28 addressing his concerns. North Dakota Rep. Kevin Cramer in March was part of a bipartisan group of 41 members of Congress who requested the 2017 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education appropriations bill prevent using federal funds to implement new regulations on anhydrous ammonia facilities throughout the nation.

Hoeven said he’s likely to put a provision preventing the anhydrous ammonia regulations from being implemented in the Department of Labor’s 2017 funding bill.

“I’ll put legislation in to stop it if I have to,” he said.

Rural Stark County Development’s Gravel Roads a Concern

Stark County’s road superintendent and a homeowner at a rural development north of Gladstone told county commissioners Tuesday during their regular meeting at the county courthouse that something must be done to alleviate gravel road problems in the seven-home community.

Al Heiser stood beside rural resident Mathew Rothstein as they spoke about road concerns in the Bakken Estates development located off Highway 10 about 10 miles east of Dickinson.

Rothstein showed the commission several photos he took of deep washouts — some as deep as 5 feet — alongside gravel roads within the development.

“It keeps on wearing out and washing back in, wearing out and washing back in,” Rothstein said.

Continue reading “Rural Stark County Development’s Gravel Roads a Concern”