(Published Tuesday, June 12, 2007 03:06:13 PM CST)
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
To the Military Order of Cooties volunteers. For many veterans, serving others continues long after service to their country is past. So it is with volunteers in this organization with the funny name. Harvey Jordan, John Thompson and Robert Updike of Cooties Pup Tent 33 in Edgerton and Beulah Rudolph of Pup Tent 9 Auxiliary in Janesville travel together every other Thursday to volunteer at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Middleton. Each volunteers 16 hours per month, and they've racked up 42 years of combined service at the hospital. The four shuttle patients and charts and pick up X-rays. Mary Merlin, voluntary service specialist, calls the four a great asset. Cooties, a subordinate order of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, are known for going the extra mile to ease life for others. These four do the organization proud.
To Adopt-A-Highway groups. More than 3,000 organizations help keep our roadsides clean. Their work is especially obvious in spring, as volunteers for each group don orange vests and clean two-mile segments of state highways. Of course, if we weren't such slobs, their efforts wouldn't be needed. But while volunteering at least three times a year, they pick up about 585 tons of trash, says state Department of Transportation Secretary Frank Busalacchi. "There is simply no way our department could meet its many responsibilities without the help we receive from local governments and groups including AAH participants," he wrote in a letter to the Gazette. More than 2,000 miles of state highways still await "adoption." To learn more, contact a regional DOT office or go to www.dot.wisconsin.gov.
To Minnesota's threat to end tuition reciprocity. For almost 40 years, Wisconsin and Minnesota have had tuition reciprocity, enabling tens of thousands of students to attend universities in their neighboring state for tuition comparable to what they would pay in their home state. The states have paid each other to compensate for the lost revenue. But because Minnesota's tuition has risen even faster that of the UW System, Minnesota officials see it as unfair to students staying in the Gopher State and are considering pulling out of the agreement. That would be unfortunate, decreasing educational opportunities and affordability. Sen. Sheila Harsdorf, R-River Falls, says ending the agreement is a simplistic, reckless solution to Minnesota's political problem. "If Minnesota wants to make things fair, they should consider lowering tuition on their residents, not increasing them on Wisconsin's," she said.
To online access to Wisconsin's Blue Book. Did you know that Julius P. Heil was our governor in 1940? Or that he was born in Germany in 1876? You could quickly learn that and much more about him by accessing a new online database that includes all 87 editions of the biennial almanac of state government. Besides elected officials, Blue Books detail government functions and various state statistics. The project is expected to be a gold mine for historians, students and genealogists. The Legislative Reference Bureau started putting new Blue Book editions online about 10 years ago. But it took the UW Digital Collections Center, with $7,000 in funding from the UW System, more than a year to scan in editions going back to 1853. Few libraries have every edition, and the online database will plug those gaps. Check it out at digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/WI.WIBlueBks.
To the Military Order of Cooties volunteers. For many veterans, serving others continues long after service to their country is past. So it is with volunteers in this organization with the funny name. Harvey Jordan, John Thompson and Robert Updike of Cooties Pup Tent 33 in Edgerton and Beulah Rudolph of Pup Tent 9 Auxiliary in Janesville travel together every other Thursday to volunteer at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Middleton. Each volunteers 16 hours per month, and they've racked up 42 years of combined service at the hospital. The four shuttle patients and charts and pick up X-rays. Mary Merlin, voluntary service specialist, calls the four a great asset. Cooties, a subordinate order of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, are known for going the extra mile to ease life for others. These four do the organization proud.
To Minnesota's threat to end tuition reciprocity. For almost 40 years, Wisconsin and Minnesota have had tuition reciprocity, enabling tens of thousands of students to attend universities in their neighboring state for tuition comparable to what they would pay in their home state. The states have paid each other to compensate for the lost revenue. But because Minnesota's tuition has risen even faster that of the UW System, Minnesota officials see it as unfair to students staying in the Gopher State and are considering pulling out of the agreement. That would be unfortunate, decreasing educational opportunities and affordability. Sen. Sheila Harsdorf, R-River Falls, says ending the agreement is a simplistic, reckless solution to Minnesota's political problem. "If Minnesota wants to make things fair, they should consider lowering tuition on their residents, not increasing them on Wisconsin's," she said. 
