Tag: Columns

Property owners have right above all

Last fall, after two years of listening to input from the public, special-interest groups and government agencies, the North Dakota Industrial Commission got serious about creating a list of “extraordinary places.”

Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem in December designated a list of 18 special places in western North Dakota and crafted a proposed set of rules aimed at limiting the impact of energy exploration in those areas.

Great, right? Republicans working in harmony with the environmental groups to soften oil’s impact on the state? “Is this heaven?” we asked. “No, it’s North Dakota,” they responded.
Too bad it’s a little more complicated than that.

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Building tomorrow: Progress is the key word to describe what’s happening today in Dickinson, southwest ND

Everywhere one looks, Dickinson and southwest North Dakota is changing and growing.
There are new people living in new homes and apartments, new stores alongside new places to eat and recreate, a new school and another likely in the works.

No matter which way you look at it, the city is in the midst of massive changes. Most of all, we’re making progress.

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Play football, but play smart

Today, another football season ends. No other season will ever be like it — and I don’t say that in the way you think.

The game America has made not so much its pastime but its tradition is an ever-changing entity.

In some ways, it has to be. I mean, would you still watch it if the forward pass remained illegal? Would the game even exist today had that rule not been changed?

As we enter what could be a memorable Super Bowl between the Denver Broncos and their NFL-best offense against the Seattle Seahawks’ No. 1-ranked defense in the first cold-weather Super Bowl in decades, football is beginning to show signs of change.

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Helping the next generation of journalists

Newspapers can be one of our greatest learning tools. I am convinced three things taught me how to read: The Berenstain Bears, Little Golden Books and newspapers.

One of my earliest memories is from when I was 4 and my older brothers would spread the sports pages of The Dickinson Press and Bismarck Tribune out on our kitchen table so I could read basketball box scores.

A few years later, one of my favorite parts of Mrs. Rita Greff’s sixth-grade classroom at Regent Elementary was her newspaper clippings board, where students could read snippets of the newspaper that Mrs. Greff felt pertained to us. She would clip out The Press and Tribune for us to read. If we wanted to claim the clipping, we were to write our initials on the clip.

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2013: A year of curveballs

As I write this column from my future in-laws’ kitchen table in Harlowton, Mont., I can’t help but reflect on how much this year has meant in the grand scheme of my life.

This was the year I got engaged, received a life-changing promotion, remembered what it was like to live with a college student when my fiancée decided to go back to school for licensing in her field of study, adopted a military dog with about two weeks notice and, just when I thought things were settling down in time for the holidays and a boatload of changes coming at work, I lost my grandpa just days before Sarah and I were called to Montana to visit her ailing grandfather.

This year has taught me — if nothing else — that no matter how positive life can be, there is always a negative to balance out life and, for lack of a better term, bring us back to reality.

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