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Vol. 115 No. 51

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DECEMBER 18, 2020

Christmas cacti, gifts add smiles to season By Brad Mosher

bmosher@countrymedia.net

For some, it is the season for Christmas Cacti. And assorted gift bags. Small succulent plants are among the gifts being handed out by a group of local Secret Santa’s as part of the Giving Tree program for residents of Slope and Bowman counties. According to Edna Paulson, the local director of the Giving Tree program, the cactus and travel medical gift bags have been organized at the Bowman Senior Center. By Friday, she said that most of the gifts she had accumulated would be in their new homes. Some items on the wish lists were easy to find. Some took shopping trips to Baker, Hettinger and even Dickinson. Other things forced Paulson to order online to find them. “Everything that could be purchased locally was. We hopped online to order most of the rest of the stuff or went other towns close by,” she explained. “All the items are basically being organized right now,” she said over the weekend. When the families pick up their wish lists of gifts, there will be some work to do. “Most of the families are going to wrap their own gifts, which gives them some ownership – and that is pretty cool. They get pretty excited about that.” Many of the gifts have already been picked up, she added. Most of the rest will be gone from

her temporary staging area. “My goal is by mid-week to have everything distributed. Every year I have to find a space to ‘land in’ and organize,” she said. One day, she is hoping to find a location that can be home to the program, she added. The Giving Tree program is designed to help families that are struggling during the Christmas season and throughout the year and has been around for many years before COVID-19 came to North Dakota, she explained. But it also is not limited to providing

help just during the Christmas season. “People think the Giving Tree is just a once a year thing. It is not. We help people all year long, as needed.” Earlier this year, the group had been using some locations as temporary storage. Then the senior citizen center was gracious and let us use their space to organize the traveling medical baskets, she said. “I usually order fruit for assisted living and some of the senior citizens. Anyway we can lift their spirits and reach out to as many as we can,” she added. The wish list drew

a bigger response than 2019. “This year was tough for everybody. I knew we would have a rise in families. “This year, we are servicing about 33 families.” For the families that lost someone during the year, there was a special gift selected from local florists, she explained. “We deliver Christmas Cactus to those who have lost loved ones. I usually order about 60 of those and they all pretty much have a home.” She even gets responses to the prickly gifts. “I’ve gotten donations and they have a little note in there that says their Christmas Cactus from last year is blooming … it is just beautiful,” Paulson added with a smile. “That is just a warm fuzzy because they have been able to watch it grow. “It is in memory of their loved ones so they can look at the plant and get a warm fuzzy.” In 2019, the group distributed more than 60 traveling medical baskets. This year, the numbers of medical baskets are down a little bit. Paulson also asked that if people know of local residents who have lost someone or if they know of people who are traveling for medical treatments, that hopefully they will try to contact her. Paulson said she has been part of the program for about a decade and it had been around for years before that.

Community Cupboard hits its busy season Staﬀ Report

When it comes to the season of giving, Bowman County is there and has always been there to meet the food needs of local residents. According to Michael Rice, the treasurer for the Bowman/ Slope Community Cupboard, the people of Bowman County have responded even in the season of COVID-19. “You wouldn’t believe it. We are getting so many (donations). The people of Bowman and the surrounding areas are super, super generous... not only money but also food and people offering to help,” he explained Monday. People have been donating most of the items that the cupboard has stocked, he said. “I would say it is 60-40 individuals to businesses. That is simply because a lot of the individuals are donating through their churches and through different organizations and food drives.” One of the recent examples was during the Festival of Lights in Bowman in early December. “The Bowman Development Corporation had an entry fee for people to go in, so we got a donation from them. There has been another donation coming from the Scranton churches. Another came from the Bowman Lions. “It is the people who are supplying the foodstuffs. The businesses are donating with money,” Rice said. “This time of the year is very fulfilling for the Cupboard,” he said. “During the summer donations can be kind of thin as people go on vacations. There aren’t a lot of opportunities to have food drives.” The cupboard is still looking for food drives and volunteers to help, he added. They should contact Monica Septon. There is also a local cupboard in Amidon. Both locations are part of the western region of the Great Plains Food Bank. For the people who get food from the Bowman cupboard every third Wednesday one block east of Main Street, Rice said they ask people not to get food from the Amidon cupboard. “It is just like a regular grocery store,” Rice said, describing the Bowman location. “The only difference is we can offer what we are given.”

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Weekend WEATHER

SAT

45º/26º

SUN

50º/27º

Bowman dressed in white by fog, sub-freezing weather Staﬀ Report

For some, it may have been a sneak preview of a white Christmas when dense fog combined with sub-freezing temperatures in Bowman County and surrounding areas. The region was covered by dense fog for two days and at the same time freezing temperatures left the are coated with a near monochrome white appearance. According to the Bismarck office of the National Weather Service, much of the state was hit with what acted like a rare Hour frost. During the event, the frost got really thick and acted like snow would, the spokesman said. “It is not really a common event,” James Assid said Monday. “Usually is disappears fairly quickly but this one appeared to stick around a little bit because we dropped in temperature.”

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“It is not predicting a white Christmas,” he added. In fact, the forecast for the next week has about a 20 percent chance of precipitation. “It was an interesting meteorological event, that is for sure,” he added. It was also visible by satellite and centered at Lake Sakakawea covering most of North Dakota for a time. The event broke up Sunday morning when the cloud cover broke up and the sun helped burn off the fog. At one point, the region had a weather advisory, which said visibility was limited to about one-quarter mile.