A rare treat… an albino hummingbird. Something that is seldom seen and almost NEVER photographed. Albino hummingbird Fifteen-year-old photographer Marlin Shank was fortunate enough to capture several images of a rare albino ruby-throated hummingbird while in a park in Staunton , Va

TRUE DAKOTAN PHOTO/DUKE WENZEL

Gold-lined clouds sit on the horizon with a silhouette of the century-old Spring Valley School in a photograph taken last week. The school is about two miles north/northeast of Wessington Springs. The school was in use for many decades, beginning well over 100 years ago. The school operated under different names over the years, first Shryock, then Sheppard. It eventually was called Spring Valley, named after a valley southwest of the school which has a spring-fed creek running through it.

THIS BLUE SPRUCE tree will become the biggest Christmas tree ever in Wessington Springs when it is set up in the Humm Dinger I south lot. The tree was cut from the corner of Lawrence and Ada Caffee’s lots on Main Street. The 40-foot tree was being loaded on to a trailer by workers from Total Construction who contracted the move. According to Lawrence, the evergreen trees around their home were brought back on a back haul from Washington by his hired men, Gary Bessey and Henry Sinkie in the 1960s. “They were only about two feet tall then,” he said. The tree will go out in a blaze of glory when it gets decorated with over 1,000 feet of lights and topped with a two-foot star for this Christmas season.