Tag: Columns

liFeeling safer with medical helicopter around

During my flight, I got to see sights like this, such as the under-construction Sanford Health Clinic, front, and St. Joseph’s Hospital, back.

Toward the end of August and into early September, I will take a few days off and spend what I can only presume will be some long days at my family’s farm helping my dad and brother harvest what we hope is an above-average spring wheat and durum crop.

As safe as farmers try to be at any time of year, harvest can get hectic and mishaps have been known to happen.

I remember one year where an accidental touch of a combine’s throttle nearly caused the machine to run over my brother, who was working underneath it. Yes, safety says we should have turned the combine off before working on it. As most farmers will attest, that is a safety rule that typically doesn’t get followed — especially when the crop is ready in the field and storm clouds loom on the horizon somewhere in Montana.

If an accident were to happen on the farm this harvest, I am confident the affected person will be just fine. That’s because I now know just how fast medical help can reach us.

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In retrospect, pogs were a bad decision

You know all that old stuff you have and still can’t believe you ever bought in the first place?Try to remember it was once new and you loved it.

Perhaps you have seen the lists floating around the Internet lately, recapping many of the ill-advised fashion or technology decisions many of us made in the ’80s and ’90s.

I’m not ashamed to say I once rocked a ’90s bowl cut parted down the middle, covered by a bucket hat while wearing a brightly colored Starter jacket over a No Fear T-shirt and an unbuttoned flannel.

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Relay for Life a great summer experience

The word “Hope” is spelled out in luminary bags at Dickinson’s Relay for Life.

One of my favorite summer events in Dickinson is the Stark County Relay For Life, which was held Friday night and Saturday morning at the Dickinson High School practice field.

Like so many people in our community, I have several family members and friends who have fought cancer. Most have survived but others — including my aunt and two of my greatest mentors in writing — succumbed to the disease.

I have been attending these fundraising events since my mom, Kitty, became involved.She has served as a team captain and is on the survivor committee, which she chaired for two years.

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Movie magic almost non-existent these days

Remember when going to the movies was supposed to be a magical experience?

Once upon a time, movies seemed entirely magical to a world that was still enthralled by the technology of photographs that moved and eventually had sound to go with them, hence the term “movies.”

Back then, there were no computer-generated images or films that cost more to make than the annual gross-domestic product of a small Pacific island nation. Just actors and actresses acting and interacting.

They weren’t flying on a computer-generated machine in front of a green or blue screen, nor were they fighting tennis balls held in the air by sticks meant to represent some alien projectile or bad guy that can only exist via computers or cheesy costumes.

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Moore set a standard for DSU athletes

Dickinson State forward Janae Moore dribbles past a Jamestown defender in a women’s basketball game on Nov. 23 at Scott Gymnasium. Moore, who would have been a junior at DSU in the fall, died Wednesday in a one-vehicle accident near her hometown of Sidney, Mont.

Janae Moore set an enviable standard for Dickinson State student-athletes. She was strong in the classroom, and fearless and physical on the basketball court. When it came to Blue Hawks, she was about as good as it got.

On Wednesday, DSU lost one of its shining examples of a student-athlete when Moore died in a car accident near her hometown of Sidney, Mont.

She was only 20 years old, would have been a junior for the Blue Hawks next season, and was well on her way to establishing an excellent career as she played a key role in trying to build the women’s basketball team into a perennial success.

Moore’s death is the second time in four years that DSU has had to deal with the untimely death of a standout athlete.

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