Did you see my Part I post about Money Smart Week, last week?
Here’s Part II. I wanted to share some additional recommended resources that we can all take advantage of while we’re home-bound (and, perhaps, needing extra projects to fill our time and be productive? Why not take control of your budget as a project!)
CashCourse.org — This is a great financial education resource geared toward college students. Create a personalized budget with their BudgetWizard tool, watch a few short and informative videos, or use their financial calculators to figure out your loan repayment terms after graduation.
Look Forward to Your Future WI — Still in school for a few years? You can still apply for more scholarships! (that’s FREE money!) This tool from the state’s Department of Financial Institutions lists some places to look.
Mint.com — An automated, personalized budget tracker, but on steroids. Download the app, connect it securely to your bank or credit card accounts, and it’ll track where your money is going each month. With the Bill Payment Tracker, Budget Alerts, and Free Credit Score, it’s hard to believe this is all available free!
Finally, if you would rather get some guidance from a real live person, feel free to reach out to our financial literacy educator on campus, Katie Patterson. She’s a very smart, kind, and resourceful person whose entire job on campus is to coach you to better manage your money! She can meet with you virtually or over the phone to help you make a plan — all 100% free to you.
Tuesday, April 21, 1868, marked the opening day for the Whitewater State Normal School (now UW-Whitewater). Charles Brockway, one of the school’s first students, recalled about the experience: “It was a bright, beautiful, April day…when the formal opening of the school took place. The sound of the hammer was still echoing through the halls and the workmen rested from their labors, while the citizens of the village and the students who on the morrow would meet to begin the active work of the school, gathered in the Assembly Room [of Old Main] to listen to the inaugural address of President Arey” (Salisbury, p.40) Oliver Arey’s speech reflected on the importance of education, the progress of institutions of learning in the country, and the history and value of normal schools. The glee class sang a dedicatory song written by Mrs. H.E.G. Arey, teacher of English literature, French, and drawing. President Allen from the Platteville Normal School and President Chadbourne from the University of Wisconsin were also on hand to congratulate the new school.
Started as a school to educate teachers, the school offered two areas of study, the normal department and the model or training school. The model school gave teachers-in-training the opportunity to educate the children of Whitewater. President Salisbury said the school provided “academic facilities to the local community, which felt itself entitled to such privileges by reason of the bonus it had given to secure the location of the school”(Salisbury, p. 14). Students in the normal department followed a three year program of study. Like many normal schools, classes in the normal department were free if students pledged to teach in the state after graduation. Below is an image of the register student signed stating that they would teach in the state after graduation. The top names on the left and right column are two of the six students who were in the first graduating class in 1870.
Many things have changed over the last one-hundred fifty-two years, but Charles Brockman’s words about education at UW-Whitewater still ring true: “Day by day, here a little, and there a little, the mind opens, the faculties expand, the powers increase, the ability grows, and the world and life are better” (Salisbury, p. 41).
Salisbury, Albert. Historical Sketches of the First Quarter-century of the State Normal School at Whitewater, Wisconsin : With a Catalogue of Its Graduates and a Record of Their Work, 1868-1893. Madison, Wis.: Tracy, Gibbs, 1893.
Do you know what your credit score is? Or how to improve it? What do you need to know about a 401(k) or a Roth IRA?
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And yes, I’m talking to YOU, students! While financial topics might seem like amorphous topics that you can figure out years from now when you’re settled into a good job, the truth is that the financial decisions you make right now can have an oversize impact on your life for years to come!
Andersen Library can help you make sure those financial decisions are smart ones. While nobody here (including me) is a financial advisor, we can provide you with resources to educate yourself and make smart decisions. Here are a few resources:
Last week during Money Smart Week 2020, I co-hosted a webinar called Ask a Financial Expert. You can view the recording here. Three local campus experts shared their expertise, somewhat geared toward staff but I think students can benefit greatly too:
Emily Calhoun, from UW Credit Union, talked about the credit score’s importance and how to improve it. If you want to know more about your own credit score, contact Emily to do a free, private, one-on-one, no-obligation credit score review with her!
Mark Gmach, a finance lecturer on campus, shared information about investing and savings for long term goals. Did you know, students, that if you start saving an average of $100 a week at age 25 or so, you could become a millionaire by age 65? Yes, really! Get more information on managing your own finances through reading some great books from the library by financial advice gurus like Suze Orman, Dave Ramsey, or Robert Kiyosaki. Each of them have plenty of free advice on their websites, too. Or check out one of the books linked from the images in this post.
Paul Nylen, an accountant and tax lawyer, shared information about wills, trusts, and estate planning. While that may seem far off to some students, you can still learn something about the basics now.
This beautiful book of haiku poems is just what I needed in these current strange times! Maybe you need it, too?
The poems in this book are all originals by Japanese haiku masters. The fully bilingual book actually prints the Japanese in characters and in Romanized script, as well as in English of course. Since they are in translation, the English versions do not always follow the “5 syllables – 7 syllables – 5 syllables” rule that we probably all remember imitating in elementary school, but they are none the less beautiful and touching for that.
A poem like this one: Just being alive the poppy flower and I. seems especially appropriate in this season, as spring bursts to life by the day and the human activity normally seen at this time is muted. But that stillness also brings some opportunity for reflection that we might otherwise miss. Perhaps you can find the same satisfaction and even joy as the poet suggests, just in being alive with a flower in your backyard?
Since it’s rather difficult for any of our readers to browse through the lovely images which are half the appeal of a book like this one, check out the publisher’s page for a peek at some of the fantastical, magical illustrations that accompany the text. And remember, while the library’s closed, you can still request to check out this or any other item! Use the Drive-Up Library Pick Up link on the library home page.
My first book of haiku poems: A picture, a poem, and a dream
translated by Esperanza Ramirez-Christensen, illustrated by Tracy Gallup
New Arrivals Island, 2nd Floor E My
“A door had opened. The land had folded like fabric.
Conduction, Conduction, Conduction.” To read The Water Dancer, you must unleash your ability to be tethered. You
have to escape former notions of the Underground Railroad and Harriett Tubman
and move into the realm of the magical, mystical, and the macabre. You can no
longer be shackled to a forgone conclusion and must simply give into
conduction. “That is conduction. The many stories, the many bridges, the way
over the river.”
Hiram Walker, the main character, begins the tale as his
mother is taken away and he has to find another home in which to live. Hiram is
a slave with nothing more than a memory mostly of his mother as a beautiful
woman doing a water-dance with a jug propped upon her head. His mother was the
mistress of the master and Hiram is the master’s son. With a resemblance of the master, he is
brought into the main house as the caretaker of his half-brother, the
legitimate, White, heir of the Virginian Lockless Plantation.
Hiram is notably intelligent, has a savant-type memory of
the mundane, but little memory of his own history which is the key to a power
that he does not entirely understand. As he learns to use this power, he will
escape, be abducted, transplanted, and transformed as he journeys across
America. It will also force him to confront his memories and truths about
slavery and his life.
Through harrowing experiences and the tutelage from the magical and mythical Harriet Tubman, Hiram is taught to understand his power of conduction. Conduction is the power to teleport through memory and water connectivity groups of people from one place to another. As Hiram conjures his powers, he reflects, “I just sat there watching her in this silence. I felt that she looked different as though the very texture of her story had somehow been etched into her face. The summoning of a story, the water, and the object that made memory real as brick: that was Conduction.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates is exceptional at reimaging the Antebellum South from that of the history books. He categorized his characters as the:
The Tasked – The slaves who are tasked to work
the land either in the fields or in the house.
The Quality – The slave owners or gentry that
live the quality life of pomp, pageantry, and puffery.
The Lows – The Whites who oversee the slaves.
They have no financial power, but simply positional power over the slaves and
much disenfranchised resentment toward the Quality.
The Freedmen – Those slaves who have been
granted freedom that still live in the South.
In some cases they are better-off than the Lows and are vehemently hated
by the Lows.
Ryland Men – A posse of Lows that capture
runaway Tasked, harass the Freedmen, and are the Quality’s hired whipping men
(punishment providers for the Tasked).
The Coffin – Natchez, Mississippi is the deep
South where slaves are sold into hard labor and is view as a death sentence. There is little hope of escape, conduction,
or reunion after being sent to the Coffin.
Only the most powerful and skillful conductors can extract a slave from
the Coffin.
The are many aspects
of the book that I enjoyed, the most moving part of The Water Dancer was
not Hiram’s escape, return to the South, or escape of the people he loves, but the
revisionist history or better yet the reimagined history. How Coates weaves in
the legendary story of Harriett Tubman and her spiritual powers of conduction
gives testament to why she was also called Moses. Like the parting of the Red Sea, Coates captures
Harriett Tubman as a water weaver that blend story, prayer, and hope into a tele-portable
passage to freedom. The Water Dancer consists of the shared, remembered, and the retold
stories of “heroes who did not live in books, but in our talk; an entire
world of our own, hidden away in memory.” This collective memory is also
part of the power needed to achieve conduction (Quinn, 2019).
A massive river of information about the novel coronavirus flows through social media and the internet. Some days I almost feel swamped by it. And it isn’t slowing down. It can be hard to tell what story is accurate and what is full of baloney (fish?). It could take hours or even days to wade through enough information to figure out the truth about a particular story. Checking with a reliable website like CNN or NPR is a good start news and also for double-checking what you’ve read or watched elsewhere. Following guidelines for evaluating internet resources will help you analyze news stories. Luckily, there are websites out there that have already done some evaluating and fact checking for you. Check out this guide for How to Avoid Misinformation about COVID- 19/Coronavirus. It includes a list of known sources of misinformation on the coronavirus and COVID-19, as well as a list of specific sources of good information. Lastly, don’t miss the column of misinformation trackers, where you can type in or browse for your “fact” and see how real it is.
The Wisconsin Capitol: Stories of a Monument and Its People by Michael Edmonds New Arrivals Island, 2nd Floor F589 .M18 E46 2017
When I first moved to Wisconsin I noticed that the State Capitol building in Madison offered free tours. We had family visiting from out-of-state so it was the perfect time to do something touristy. The tour was a lot more fascinating than I had expected – and the building itself was impressive. The docent shared fascinating facts about the architecture and materials (the marble comes from all over the world). Since the legislature was not in session, we got to sit in both chambers.
Michael Edmonds delves into the history of our state along with the history of the building. He’s an expert in Wisconsin lore and has written several other books about Wisconsin history and folklore.
If you haven’t visited Wisconsin’s first state capitol, it is worth a trip out to Belmont. Although the building is rustic, it is an important piece of Wisconsin’s past. And its setting in southwest Wisconsin is lovely.
We miss you, Warhawks! But the Library staff is still available to help you with your research. You may reach us by phone, live chat or email — or schedule an appointment with a librarian on the Library web site.
The Libraries are also offering a pick-up service for equipment (including laptops), books and media.
Looking for something a bit different? Try a little armchair nature appreciation via Explore.org‘s streaming nature cams! There’s quite a variety from which to choose, including farm sanctuaries (sheep barn!), ocean/underwater views, cats, dogs, bird cams, and even a “zen cam” category. Some of these might be perfect for meditation, although I wouldn’t choose the honey bee or alligator feeds for that! Many are live feeds, but there also are some highlights from live feeds.
In response to library across the world closing their physical locations, The Internet Archive is making available 1.4 million books to meet people’s needs. The bulk of this collection was already available through the Internet Archive. What is unique is they are removing waitlists in order to provide access to everyone without wait. This collection will be available worldwide until the end of June or when the United States declares the covid-19 emergency is over. According to Internet Archive, this collection “supports emergency remote teaching, research activities, independent scholarship, and intellectual stimulation while universities, schools, training centers, and libraries are closed.”
