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Local event will offer unique chance to get hands-on with science

There will be a STEAMfest in Fort Dodge on Saturday, but it will not be about the steam produced by boiling water. In fact, the STEAM portion of the name STEAMfest is an acronym for science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics. The event will offer young people a chance to get a little bit of hands-on experience in each of those fields of endeavor. Hopefully, those experiences will nurture or even start a lifelong interest in one of those fields. Perhaps some of the leading scientists and engineers of the future will get their start at this event. STEAMfest will be from 1 ...

Iowa Central shows enrollment increases

Iowa Central Community College continues to attract students to its high caliber programs and has seen a nice increase in enrollment. The college’s Board of Directors was recently informed that the total number of students is 5,058 across its three campuses in Fort Dodge, Storm Lake and Webster City. That’s up 2 percent from the first semester in the fall of 2021. Those students come from 97 of Iowa’s 99 counties. Additionally, the student body includes people from 45 of the 50 states. There are also 105 international students from 40 other countries, which is a remarkable ...

4-H is about helping youths achieve

National 4-H Week, which began Sunday and concludes Saturday, is a good time to celebrate the enormous contributions 4-H makes to our community and nation. It’s hard to imagine anyone in Iowa who doesn’t know a bit about 4-H, but this week is an appropriate occasion to reflect on the important contribution this organization makes by helping young people develop skills and values that will serve them well for a lifetime. It has been more than a century since 4-H got its start in Iowa in 1901. Today it is the largest youth-development program in the Hawkeye State. About one-quarter ...

The Messenger is here to serve you

Newspapers and reporters have had a rough few years, as they’ve been lumped in with those in newsertainment who led too many to become distrustful of the community-focused work our journalists practice each day. For the men and women working in our state’s weekly and daily newspaper newsrooms, the objective is to avoid that twisting, curating and injection of agenda that has been masquerading as “news.” We do so strenuously. Why? Because we know how hard we must work to earn your trust; and that it is our responsibility to accurately and thoroughly report the news of our ...

October is Co-op Month across US

There are various types of businesses that operate as cooperatives, but according to the National Cooperative Business Association they all are owned and democratically controlled by their members and are designed to serve those members. The members typically are the people who use the co-op’s services or buy its goods. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, there are 40,000 co-ops of all types in the country. Collectively, they pay out some $25 billion a year in wages. Here in Iowa, we are most familiar with the co-ops that run grain elevators and provide fuel ...

Grassley, Feinstein work together for the public good

The United States Congress takes a lot of criticism, and frankly, much of it is deserved. But the nation’s governing body is still capable of doing the right thing in a bipartisan manner. A case in point is a bill championed by Iowa’s U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, a Republican, and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California. Those two have very different voting records in the Senate, but they came together to sponsor a bill that will help to protect all Americans. The legislation is called the National Computer Forensics Institute Reauthorization Act of 2022. It will ensure that a ...