Bright and early this morning, (6 a.m.) I, and several other women were at NSU helping to welcome a bus load of international students - Korea and China. They’d arrived last night in Minneapolis and rode to Aberdeen. I noticed there were about 38 females and only two males in the group. Wonder why the gender difference? At any rate, once they are rested up and settled in, I look forward to taking some of them around and showing them “my” South Dakota prairie.

Do you remember that old joke where a man was hitting himself repeatedly over the head with a stick and his friend asked, “Why are you hitting yourself?” and the man replied, “Because it feels so good when I quit.”

That’s the economy right now. Once this horrible slump is over, we’ll appreciate our jobs, homes and income more than ever.

I wish there were a defining moment, like D-Day, when we could all throw a party. Call it “E of R Day” (End of Recession.) I’ll bring the chips and dip.

Think of all the diversity around you. You might be surprised at how much there is that you don’t really notice. For instance, I have a young friend who was born with a form of dwarfism. I also have a friend who, because of a condition has grown to more than 7 feet tall. One of my friends has difficulty walking, another is a cancer survivor and several are gay or lesbian. And I haven’t even listed my friends from other cultures. The thing is, we so often take these things for granted. After the first meeting we forget about any differences and just see them as someone we like having in our lives.

The calendar on this web site only allows for five and a half lines of text, so sometimes it’s difficult to include all the pertinent details on an event.

Save the date - Oct. 27 - for what  looks to be an amazing diversity summit. The event will be from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. with a repeat session in the evening from 5:30 to 8:30. The formal title is: “Growing the Good Life in Northeast South Dakota: the challenges and opportunities of attracting and retaining a diverse workforce.” Target audience is employers, business owners, city officials and development officers from the region. Cost will be minimal - $10 to cover the price of morning rolls and coffee, noon lunch and afternoon break. Two dynamic speakers will cover the topics from immigration and refugee issues to thinking outside the box when it comes to eliminating business turnover.

More information will be available in the near future, but to sign up now, simply send an e-mail to diverse@nvc.net.

I opened a can of mixed nuts the other day. I wondered why the label on the can didn’t say “assorted nuts,” because there were many varieties of nuts in the can. To be perfectly accurate, the label should have read, “assorted mixed nuts.”

It used to be that proper English was to use “an” instead of “a” in front of most words beginning with the letter h - such as, “an historical event” or, “the recipe called for an herb Herb didn’t have.” Wonder why that changed?

The big debate on the table right now is what to do with the Alexander Mitchell Library. The building has seen better days and the roof is leaking and the basement flooding.

I grew up in a family of six kids. Money was usually tight but my mother was very clever at getting us involving in things that were either free or inexpensive. We had an annual family pass to the swimming pool. We all had ice skates because the skating rink was free and, of course, we all used the library.

Every Friday I’d walk to the library and pick out my five books for the week. Five was the limit that we could check out then. Maybe it still is. Books took me away to live a life in other families, other cultures, other parts of the world. One day I was traveling in a giant snail with Dr. Dolittle, the next day Rudyard Kipling had dropped me into the jungle.

The library had so many great things going on when I was young - a summer reading program with a picnic and awards at the end of the summer for kids who had read the most books. They had the bookmobile. What a great service that was.

But now, with computers, I fear people will lose the sense of joy reading a ‘real’ book - curling up in a chair on a rainy day under an afghan and getting lost in a story. Can’t do that on a ‘puter screen.

Whatever decision they make - to renovate or build anew, at least there is no talk about closing. I’d be all vigilante on that idea. A world without books is one without dreams.