My Earliest Memory

One of the earliest memories I still remember is when my mom brought me to a pet store to adopt a cat for me. We walked in and it smelled of the typical odor that goes along with a building that stores many animals and supplies for them. On either side of the door were large cages filled with puppies, though I don't remember what kind. And on the right side wall were the cages with cats inside. I eagerly looked in every one of them, but was sorely disappointed when I saw that almost all of them were various shades of gray or black. Not one tabby or white colored feline in the bunch. But that certainly wasn't going to stop me from taking one home with me. Not long after I had decided I was just going to have to settle for a gray cat, my mom called me over to the counter up front. She pointed me to a cage separate from all the others, I still don't know why. Inside was a beautiful calico cat. Her fur was dusty white with sploches of brown and black. Her pretty pink nose sniffed curiously as I poked my fingers through the holes in the cage. I told my mom she was the one I wanted and couldn't keep my eyes off her while she filled out the paper work and drove us home. I decided to name her after a character in my favorite movie at the time, Hunchback of Notre Dame. I named her Esmerelda and her nickname soon became Ezzie.

Budget Cuts Affect Police and Public Safety

The Sheriff’s department is facing problems due to a budget cut imposed by the county commissioners. Sheriff Gus DiCersari has concerned because the sheriff’s department is being forced to drive old police cruisers. “My deputies can’t keep driving these old vehicles. Something bad is going to happen," he said on the subject. In a meeting on Thursday afternoon, the Sheriff and county commissioners met to discuss these issues. Commission member, Anne Chenn, said the county’s yearly budget was reduced this year because of rising costs of health care, fuel and the $30 million the county spent to build a new prison. The Sheriff also felt the need for five new deputies as well, saying: “You’re putting the lives of the people of this county in jeopardy.”

One of the main arguments that arose during the meeting was the concern brought by the rise of migrant workers in the county. Commissioners Anita Shenuski and Raymond Laybourne argued that the migrant workers create a problem in the county for law enforcement, schools and the health care system. They told Chenn that the county should be funding the Sheriff’s department as opposed to programs for migrant workers who’ve come into the county. “They take away jobs from decent people and work for next to nothing and if something gets stolen, you can bet it is one of them that’s taken it. We need to protect local residents from them,” said Shenuski. Both Shenuski and Laybourne are in agreement that the Sheriff’s department is in need of increased funding to hire new deputies for this very reason. Chenn denied the claims brought forward by Shenuski and Laybourne, claiming that the migrants are hardworking individuals that add a great deal to the community, pay taxes and that many are seeking citizenship as well. Chenn told Sheriff DiCesari that the county did not have the $580,000 to fund the new police cruisers and additional deputies.

In the end, the vote was 5-2 against the sheriff’s request, with Chenn telling DiCesari that the Sheriff’s department would have to make do this year without the funds.

Crash Victims Identified

At 11 a.m. on Friday two vehicles collided head on about three miles east of White Earth on County Highway 34, and both then slid into Net Lake. The mother and two daughters in one vehicle were identified today as Sheyenne Lovely Norcross, 28, Rock E. Keezer III, 3, and Keyian A. Keezer, 8 months.

World's Oldest Man is a Minnesotan!

Walter Breuning was born in Melrose, Minn. and lived there for 22 years, at which point he moved to Montana and worked on railroads for 50 years. He will celebrate his 113th birthday today, making him the oldest man on Earth.

Star Tribune

Sam

Warzone Erupted on I-790

A horrible accident involving 18 vehicles on Interstate 790 leaves two people dead and twenty injured, of those twenty, four are fatally wounded.

Two people driving cars were killed in the accident and twenty were injured and sent to the hospital. An ambulance driver told Fire Chief Tony Sullivan that four of the injured had suffered life-threatening injuries. The Life Flight helicopter from Memorial Hospital was called to the scene and flew the two people with the worst injuries to the trauma center in Statesville, 50 miles from the crash site. All five of Princeton’s ambulances were on the scene, along with ambulances from four neighboring cities.

The accident happened on the northbound lanes of Interstate 790, on the western edge of Princeton, at 6:45 this morning. The Princeton Police Department is not done investigating, yet, but at this time they believe that two tractor trailers collided and started a chain reaction crash. According to Sergeant Albert Wei, of the PPD, a total of four tractor trailers and 14 cars were involved.

“One of the tractor trailers was a tanker hauling diesel fuel, “said Wei. “It was very lucky that it didn’t roll over, or dump any fuel or catch fire. The truck part of the tanker was damaged when a car hit it, but the truck driver managed to get it stopped along the side of the road.” Sullivan told reporters that the crash site looked like something from a war zone when he arrived, with bodies laying along the road, people covered with blood sitting next to their cars, emergency workers running from place to place trying to help the injured, and sirens wailing in the distance as more fire trucks and ambulances were called. “I’ve never seen anything that bad in the 18 ½ years I’ve been with the Fire Department,” he said. Sullivan and his firefighters had to cut the roofs off of three cars to free drivers and passengers trapped inside. And, according to Wei, the police officers on the scene were having trouble figuring out which people were from which vehicles and who was driving or riding.

The accident closed the entire highway, north and south. Rush hour traffic was blocked up on Interstate 690 for three hours, due to the extra commuters forced to use it instead of I-790, which was still closed at 10 a.m., with no promise of being open soon.

Sioux Tribe Children Penalized for Their Poverty

Eight days before school started, a letter was sent out informing parents of children in Eagle Butte, S.D., of a dress code that was to be put in effect when school started. Many had already bought their children school clothes and couldn't afford to buy different ones, resulting in many being pulled out of classes for "inappropriate" clothing.

Actual Story

Coffee Shop

Princeton's Coffee Corner is a great place to just sit down and relax, read a book, chat, read the newspaper. It's a family owned business, and the manager is the wife of a history teacher in the high school. It's a very small shop, but homey and familiar. High school kids go down there all the time for drinks, though everyone knows not to go there if you're skipping. It always smells pleasantly of coffee, not too strong, but there. No matter who happens to be there at any given time, you can always walk in and start a conversation with them. Even though I don't like coffee, I do love going to the Coffee Corner.

The Lead.

The lead of a story is the most essential part. Without a lead, no one would even bother taking the time to read the article. It has to be eye catching, unique, and simple.

If you complicate the language, readers wouldn't read further, simply because they already have to think about it. They want you to tell them what's going on, not to have to infer what the story is about. If you simplify your words, you will not only make it easier on your readers, you will be advertising to many more groups of people. For instance, if you write a story on a medical condition and your lead contains big medical terms, doctors and nursing students would probably read it, but the elderly man just looking for news will bypass it because he doesn't know what you're even saying.

Leads also have to be eye catching and unique. You have to find the strangest fact about the story and try to use it in the lead. It's a very fine line, however, because you still have to summarize the story in the few sentences allowed. AND you have to somehow make your lead unique. Other papers are going to use the same information you have, with the same strange facts, so you have to word your lead carefully to make it completely original.

Leads can be difficult to write, but if you find a way to perfect them, you'll be in a much nicer journalistic world.