February 2022

Why taxpayers should care about library funding via RLBSS

Do you ever wonder how your local public library is funded or who pays for the books, computers, librarians and internet? As a previous president of the board of Lake Agassiz Regional Library (LARL) for five years, I could tell you all about something called RLBSS — Regional Library Basic System Support — that’s the underlying Minnesota legislative mechanism that provides state funding to our libraries large and small.

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Leave it to beavers

What do beavers do in the wintertime? This amazing creature, as busy as they become when lakes, ponds, and rivers are ice-free, all but disappear from our view during the long cold winter months. Living below the ice inside mud and stick lodges, beavers go about their lives out of sight and out of mind until we see them again come spring.

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Respect different perspectives

An eccentric philosophy professor gave a one-question final exam after a semester dealing with a broad array of topics. The class was already seated and ready to go when the professor picked up his chair, plopped it on top of his desk and wrote on the board: “Using everything we have learned this semester, prove that this chair does not exist.”

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Baseball tested in Hawaii

The University of Minnesota Crookston baseball team struggled against the University of Hawaii at Hilo, winning just one game in the six-game series. The Golden Eagles won the final game of the series with just one run behind a complete-game shutout from Jake Dykhoff.

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