Two good-news, positive stories Minot Daily News Reporter Jill Schramm filed recently might have caught your attention as they did ours.

Earlier this month the Souris Valley Golf Course hosted a re-resurrected Winterfest. Minot has held mid-winter carnivals as far back as the early teens of last century, and they were very popular for a time back in the 1970s and ’80s.

So it was great to read about a new generation of parents and their youngsters out enjoying the new Minot Winterfest, which organizers Sunrise Rotary Club and the Minot Park District plan to make an annual event once again.

It was especially nice to see how they responded to a lack of snow at the time. A Lego station was added to replace some of the canceled activities such as the snowman building contest. Too bad Mother Nature didn’t deliver 3 inches of new snow like Minot saw on the ground this past Sunday morning. With the temperature hitting 40 degrees Sunday it would have been a great day to hold a Winterfest.

With all of the indoor winter activities kids have available to them these days not that there are enough yet the idea of keeping Winterfest to a two-day run might be wise. At any rate, if there is a Second Annual Winterfest, we hope it turns out to be even bigger and better. Maybe Mother Nature can watch for the dates and put Winterfest 2017 on her calendar.

The second good news story reported in these pages recently involves the admirable job Trinity Heath and Minot State University are doing in educating and training new nurses.

The demand for nurses has been strong for some time, Schramm reported, and forecasts indicate that isn’t going to change soon. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the need for nurses will grow at a rate of 16 percent, creating 439,300 new jobs by 2024. Already, the nation faces a nursing shortage.

The MSU nursing program has about 170 students, including both associate-degree registered nurses seeking to complete bachelor’s programs and pre-licensed students just getting into nursing, Schramm wrote.

That’s 60 to 70 graduates a year with about half staying in Minot, said MSU Nursing Department Chairwoman Niki Roed.

Trinity’s involvement has been to support MSU by assisting employees who want to move from certified nursing assistants to licensed practical nurses and eventually to registered nurses through scholarships and support for local nursing education programs. They also offer summer internships.

The cross-town support for one another is good for Minot, good for nursing and good for medical patients throughout the region. MSU, Trinity and other entities also involved in keeping those nursing positions filled with qualified people deserve our applause and thanks.