JEREMY WALTNER - EDITOR & PUBLISHER When it comes to holiday seasons that lend themselves to traditions, few deliver quite like Christmas. From singing carols to stuffing stockings to attending Christmas Eve programs at church, it feels like the Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus and all th...

A Hutchinson County judge early this week ordered that Gregory M. Farrar spend the next 180 days in county jail — with an additional 185 days suspended — for sexually assaulting a Freeman woman last summer. The ruling came from Circuit Court Judge Patrick Smith in the Olivet courtroom late Monday mo...

Gregory M. Farrar, a Hurley man who in 1998 was convicted of harassing nearly a dozen women in southeastern South Dakota, pleaded guilty via power of attorney to sexual contact without consent before Hutchinson County Circuit Court Judge Patrick Smith Monday, Nov. 27. Farrar will be sentenced by Jud...

Director Iwona Lewter has released information about auditions for “Shrek The Musical,” which will be presented as part of the 2024 Schmeckfest March 14, 15 and 16. Auditions will be held in Music Hall on the campus of Freeman Academy Thursday and Friday, Dec. 14 and 15 from 5:30 to 7:15 p.m., and S...

When Daniel Graber was looking at and listening to “A German Requiem,” the oratorio composed by Johannes Brahms between the years 1865 and 1868, he recognized immediately the difficulty of the sacred work. The parts demand the upper register of its singers, it shifts in rhythm and there are harmonic...

The ask is official. Meeting in regular monthly session Monday night, Nov. 13, the Marion School Board voted unanimously to approve a $6.5 million general bond resolution that would be used to pay for more than half of Phases 1 and 2 of a proposed three-phase Master Plan that would renovate the scho...

A force of Freeman Academy students in grades 3 through 6 energetically walked into the service area at C&B Operations Monday morning, Nov. 6 and then, after shredding their coats and getting acclimated to the lay of the land, took a seat on long tables pushed together. A short while later, sealed c...

Freeman Academy students (from left) Simon Ortman, Emmit Ortman, Adaline Graber and Elise Waltner work on an assembly line helping wash, label and package cans of turkey for distribution both locally and across the world. It was part of the scene inside the service area at C&B Operations in Freeman ...

A special informational meeting hosted by the Marion School Board Monday night, Oct. 16 offered the public its first chance to see a proposed building project that officials say would not only improve the school’s aesthetics and efficiencies, but also carry the district well into the future. As prop...