Big Things Happening At The Racine Library With Nick Demske

The sun's rising, the coffee's birthday, the party's be morning, without dawn frozen.

WRGN

All the place for you and the place for you is a local public library.

There are books and paint, nothing left for you.

It's the latest, it's the greatest, it's the library.

Today's public library is more than books

and if you haven't been there lately, you're missing plenty.

Read, listen, look, take part, learn, grow, enjoy yourself.

And your public library.

Education, information, if you're taking it, that sensation.

It's a way of life, it's for you and me.

It's the latest, it's the greatest, it's the library.

It's the latest, it's the greatest, it's the library.

And here he is, the latest, the greatest executive director of the

received public library, Nick Dems.

You thanks for joining me here this morning.

So it's nice to have the head guy in the head, Hansel, Chief Cheech, the guy who's in charge.

All that, all that chair, chair.

Okay, the latest and the greatest.

The luck going on there, I have, I use the library a lot for DVDs and Blu-rays

because you guys have them, you have everything.

I have the current movies out now, sinners.

I just brought back the other day, one battle after another, one the one best picture.

Have you seen that one yet?

Yes, I've loved it.

It's the, I didn't want you yet.

Oh, man.

And F1, I took out two.

Okay.

We sound like you're saying something dirty.

F1.

That's it.

It was something like a dirty thing.

I have that out and I just returned one battle after another, so you can get it.

Now, it may not be your library, but you can get it from the library system,

which is what happens a lot.

Absolutely.

I went to a documentary I heard about, and I watched it yesterday with my wife, and

it's beyond fascinating.

It's the true story of these triplets.

Oh, I think I know what you're talking about.

It's called three identical strangers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And the story is fascinating.

Now, I won't tell you the ending, what happens because there's a twist in turns in this

whole thing.

So, basically, this guy goes to college and people say, hey, good to see you again.

Because I never saw you.

I was never here before.

And they're all saying, hey, good to see you.

Well, I'm girl comes up, give me a kiss on the cheek to say it.

And he said, I don't know what they're talking about.

Everyone's so friendly here.

And they're, they're, they're calling them by the wrong name.

And he's don't know what's going on.

So he goes through his door room.

And somebody knocks on the door.

He says, you look exactly like them.

And he says, who?

He says, get in the car.

We're taking a two hour ride.

And he goes there.

And the guy opens the door.

And he says, I'm looking at myself.

His identical twin is right there.

They never knew we had one.

They were separated at birth.

So he goes into the thing that he's talking to the guy.

And the long Island paper news day picked up on the story.

And somebody sees it.

They say, wait a second.

I know someone.

It looks like these two guys.

And they find the third guy.

They're all triplets.

And they went on the field.

It's not too good to be true.

It's amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So they were on the field onto you.

They were on the today show.

They were everywhere.

And now they look so perfectly like.

And they had the same habits.

All three were on wrestling teams.

All three did all these things together.

And they never knew each other existed.

And then the second half of the movie takes a dark twist.

And it has to do with the adoption agency.

Right.

And they made this deal with this psychologist or whatever.

And they said, we're going to place these three

in different homes of different ones going to be a wealthy home,

middle class and lower class.

We're going to use them as guinea pigs to see if they turn out the same.

What difference is there is they've used this guinea pigs.

Yeah.

It was like a social psychology experiment.

And they didn't want to keep.

And one of the parents said, I would have taken all three.

But I know there were triplets.

Yeah.

So there was a whole big thing.

And the case is sealed until 20, 20, 26,

until everybody's dead.

It's at the Yale Library.

And they won't release any of it.

Unredacted.

Tony.

Are you a big documentary guy?

It's a good documentary.

Yeah.

No, no, I mean, just in general.

Do you want to do that?

Yeah.

I love that.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think they're fascinating.

Because you have to believe the truth and who the storyteller is.

Yeah.

And in the case, we know it's true because it's been everywhere.

But I got that movie out of my public library.

Hey.

I couldn't.

You can't get it anywhere else.

It's not on 2B.

It's not on HBO Max.

There's no.

It's only at the public library.

Well, I don't know if that's quite true.

Where else is it?

I mean, buy it on Amazon.

If you want to buy it.

Yeah.

I imagine it.

It's elsewhere.

I haven't checked.

I imagine it might be elsewhere.

But you should start at the public library.

I'm building up your library here.

Yeah.

I've definitely gotten a ton of, you know, the great thing about the library that doesn't

really work with streaming or whatever is you just walk around in a physical space still

and browse through whatever the collection is.

And pick up as many as you want that you want to take.

So I've definitely stumbled across so many documentaries that I had never even heard of and

really haven't like heard of since.

It just happened to be in our collection.

It was, you know, mind, mind bending, like really educational stuff kind of like you're

talking about.

Yeah.

Something you never would have looked for if you just looked for a week and then look

on the back to see if it sounds like interesting.

Take it home.

It's free.

Yeah.

Just bring it back in a week.

I feel like there's something even just therapeutic about wandering down a library stacks

and just, you know, throwing, throwing things in a basket as you're looking through.

Oh.

I might like this.

You, uh, you saw sinners.

I did.

I'm watching it tonight.

Yeah.

It's an amazing.

Something like that.

So sorry.

Very expensive.

Very expensive table.

If I did that at your library, who would you like it?

Anyway.

Um, yeah.

So, uh, so I'm saying with sinners to an F1, I'll watch probably tomorrow.

My wife won't want sinners with me.

She.

Yeah.

It's, uh, it's, uh, it's an amazing film now she takes out of the library all these British

TV shows and I, it's not my cup of tea.

So she watches them herself, the pride and prejudice.

And we always say there's something for everyone at the library.

There is not everything for everyone at the library.

That's good.

That should be on the outside of your building.

It's real.

It's real.

That should be on the outside right there.

Okay.

Let's talk about some of the things on the list here.

We have to talk about, um, hard to believe.

But you guys take spring break where the entire library staff goes to Fort Lauderdale for

the week on the tax payers time.

So give me a story.

So spring break coming up and you're taking a day off, huh?

Yeah.

There's always just, you know, throughout the year, uh, we're, we're a part of the city

ever seen and the city has a few holidays, fortunately for its employees.

And one of those is Friday, April 3rd.

So we just try to let people know ahead of time.

Hey, don't come to the library on Friday, April 3rd.

We are actually open on Saturday, the fourth.

Um, but we, you know, we don't want somebody making the long trek from Caledonia or Mount

Pleasant or Stert event or whatever, just to find closed doors.

So mark it on your calendar.

Friday, April 3rd.

Stay away.

Get any documentaries that day.

Uh, the seed library is opening now.

This is interesting.

These are real seeds, by the way.

These are like seeds of plant in your garden.

Real seeds.

And there's a whole metaphor.

Yeah, I know.

This is, and there's like stack.

There's like a whole line of them.

You can get seeds and they're free.

Yeah.

So if you haven't ever been to the library and seen this, first of all,

we are not by any means the only library with the seed library.

There's lots of libraries with, with this, uh, but, you know,

it's not the most common thing ever, too.

So it's a little bit of a, you know, we're, we try to stay ahead of the curve

with, with trends the libraries are doing.

Um, we wanted to do this.

And we asked around to get, uh, some sort of cabinet, you know,

with a lot of drawers.

So we could put seeds in for people to come and get.

And somebody had a line on an old, dilapidated.

You're going to love this card catalog.

I knew you were going to say that.

Yeah.

Big old card catalog.

We call it the beast at the library.

And our maintenance man, Mike, he sort of shorted up so it could stand

and looked good again.

And then, uh, a resident artist that we have on staff made it look pretty,

put moss and flowers on it.

And we have, uh, someone in our tech services department,

named Dawn, who spends a lot of time to sort of parsing out seeds,

buying seeds, parsing them out into little packets.

And filling, you know, when the first day of spring comes around,

filling this old card catalog with them so that you and I and anyone else

who wants to get seeds and plant things and grow, grow things

and maybe eat things from there, uh, can for free from the library.

This is the Twilight Zone episode.

Nixon comes into the library one day and see vines growing

over the whole, the whole place is filled with vines overnight.

I mean, if they were, if they were malicious vines,

that might be kind of cool.

It was like a Twilight Zone episode.

All these vines growing all over the library.

Oh, no.

And they're all moving.

That does feel like a Twilight Zone.

That's right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You guys can move these seeds and all of a sudden the place is taken over by the seeds.

Yeah.

I don't want that to happen.

Forget the Twilight Zone.

I'm going to turn it to a major motion picture.

I mean, if the, if the vines, depending on what, you know,

if the vines had tomatoes on them,

I'd sweeten the deal.

I'll listen.

That's good.

We're chatting with Nick Dempsky.

He is the executive director of the Racine Public Library.

We talked about the seeds that you're giving away.

That's right.

And, um, what is defense hubs?

What is a participatory defense hubs?

What's that about?

Yeah.

So we have...

You like that?

I got the participatory.

You did get that.

That is a very difficult phrase.

And I got it from the library.

That's right.

I got it.

The participatory defense hub, um, we, we have, like I said, you know,

a lot of services that lots of libraries don't have.

So just for one, we're the only library in the state right now with a full-time social worker.

You know, the seed library is a good example.

We have something called the sensory room for, uh, especially like families with, with children,

who might have special needs and might need a special space.

But the only service we have that literally no other library in the world houses is this thing called a participatory defense hub.

This is a model that exists elsewhere.

They're like, I think over 50 other participatory defense hubs throughout the country.

But none of them are housed at libraries.

We're the first one to do that.

Um, and what it is is, uh, what, you know, whether it's ours or, uh, in a different community,

uh, usually the way it goes is like once a week for two to three hours,

some space is held by, uh, some community leaders, very often, some ex incarcerated community leaders.

That's true for some of some of the leaders of our hub.

Um, and it's an opportunity for people to come in and get what I call systems literacy.

So if someone is either navigating a criminal case themselves and they just don't know what's going on

because the system is incredibly confusing.

Uh, or if someone is, if someone has a loved one that's navigating that system and they need some help navigating it,

they can come into this space.

They can meet the people that run this hub.

And those people will start asking them questions like, do you know what your charges are?

Do you know when your next court date is? Do you know where your next court date is?

Do you know who the judge and your court is?

Do you know who your lawyer is? Do you know how to get a hold of them if so?

You know, do you know what room in the, I mean, just on and on.

Do you know where to find who runs this at the library?

Yeah, so you got to be pretty knowledgeable about this stuff.

It, it's true. A lot of people, one, I should say like,

there, nobody there is lawyers.

In fact, they make that announcement at every single meeting or not lawyers.

Uh, and what they're not providing is legal advice, right?

They're providing information, they're providing information for how to, you know,

public, public information.

But the some, some of the, you know, we, there's a Presbyterian pastor who helps run it.

There's some, some like community organizers that are involved.

Many though are, again, either people who have spent time in prison

and are out now like trying to make good for their community,

or people who have had loved ones who've had,

and maybe they were even helped by the hub and now they're trying to pay that for them.

People with experience in this.

They, they have lived experience that has necessitated them getting expertise in the subject.

Look at you. That sounded like a lawyer. That sounded like a library.

That sounded like a lawyer talking there.

Well, this is great. Who came up with the idea?

Uh, you know, it came out of California, this place called Silicon Valley Debug,

sort of, uh, I guess invented and promoted the model.

And then they, you know, I, I think the, the person actually, the person who like,

primarily started it, got, uh, I want to say he became a MacArthur fellow,

one of, one of the big fellow ships.

And the way that we're seeing learned about it, the way that I even learned about it,

was, um, if you all know the Johnson Foundation at Wingspread,

which is a wind point here, they host a lot of those fellows.

Um, and they'll give talks to the community.

They gave a talk on this and we said like, wow, we could really use that.

There's a lot of people who need that in this community.

And it started, you know, that, it took us years to have,

have, enough conversations to actually get it started, but it started, um,

the first week of 2024 now.

So it's been going for just over, that's 2026, right?

Yes.

I'm just over two years.

You know, I've learned that with the library at a counter on the wall.

And there's one of the things we offered here.

That's right.

You get to know what data it is in one year.

Well, that's fantastic.

I never heard of that before.

We, I was just by appointment, how does this work?

It's, it's a drop in thing.

I mean, they're very happy to, if, if someone reached out and said I want to get,

get in touch with these folks, we can connect them directly.

Um, and they will meet with people outside of the hub too.

I mean, I wouldn't know any of this stuff.

Yeah.

There, it's, it's been hard to spread word.

However, um, Wisconsin public radio just did, uh, really good piece on them.

Um, really beautiful.

They have a, a written piece online and an audio piece.

But Racine County, I also just did a feature.

Good for them.

And one of the leaders, uh, a man named Bobby Ayela, who spent, I think 27 years in prison, uh, on a number of charges,

including reckless homicide.

And he has just been such a, I mean, not even just with the hub, but in so many places in this community,

he wants to take young people that were on his path and change their path.

And he's been very successful in doing good for him.

Yeah.

I, uh, a good friend of mine, Frank James, he does something, you know, Frank James is a good friend of mine.

Yeah.

And he does something similar with people coming out and making sure they don't go back.

And then when it's wife, you're a lot of James.

And I know they would friends of ours.

And he does good work in that.

He really does.

We, I think a lot of people don't understand how important it is to have people who have lived that life,

who have gotten out of that life, maybe serve time in prison, whatever the case is,

who can then talk to people who are in that life and say, look, I've done it.

I know what it, I know what it looks smells and tastes like.

And this is what you're, you know, this is the, this is what the path you're on leads to.

Let me, let me help steer you to another place.

Nick Dempsky is joining us.

He is the executive director of our Racine Public Library.

We trusted him with that library.

It's been around since, how long?

It is 128 years old.

I want to say 1897.

See, my house is roughly in my house.

It's from like 19 ought something or other.

Oh, yeah.

It's a lot of old news.

It is.

Things flying around the house.

Who knows?

We took, we had to take down a wall not too long to go to replace it.

And it was the old slat type wall.

Yeah, yeah.

And I said, let me look down there.

Maybe there's some kind of treasure.

Because my house was built by a, like Michigan Sea Captain.

And that's, yeah.

It was built back in the early 1900s by him.

And it maybe buried gold the balloons in the closet.

Yeah.

If anyone's burying treasure, it's a lake Michigan Sea Captain.

Yes.

So I say, no, no, you didn't do anything.

I said to him, before you steal up the wall, I'm going to put a treasure map in there.

So maybe 67 years from now, somebody will open it.

Oh, oh, and it leads to nothing.

Yeah.

And then you're just trolling in the future.

And then the other one, I went to the party store by a skeleton plastic skeleton human size.

Put it in the wall and leave it there.

You're terrible, man.

I won't be around for it.

I'll have a good laugh somewhere else, but that'll be great.

Just leave it, leave it in there.

See what happens.

It wasn't the sea captain.

It was the radio show.

Yeah.

Okay.

We're talking about things going on at the Racine Public Library.

Let's talk about tax time.

And this is where you get your tax stuff.

It's true.

And there's no way of getting out of it.

Everybody's got to pay taxes.

And you got to have it in by April 15th, unless you get an extension.

So it's coming up.

This is where you can get some help.

That's right.

Yeah.

We have had a great partnership for years now.

I'm not even sure how many years.

It's definitely since pre-pandemic, but the United Way does this really great amazing service.

It's called Vita, which stands for Volunteer Income Tax Assistance.

And basically, people can sign up.

And you can have someone, they're, again, volunteers that volunteer with the United Way.

You can have someone walk you through the process and basically do your taxes for you.

The thing is, even though we're doing that again this year, they're all booked out with appointments.

Yeah.

So I don't know, you know, typically once the 15th deadline happens and they have that extension period,

they maybe will add some things.

But at this point, they have booked out.

If you're looking for assistance with that, though, one, if you don't know just like the library does have paper tax forms.

Yeah, you have to go all the forms.

Yeah.

Sometimes we, you know, there are some people that we only see once a year.

And they're just in there to pick up their tax forms.

Same again next year.

But, you know, if we have some just on hand and then we can print off any others that anybody needs.

But if you are in need of tax help and you can't get in because you're too late to get into the Vita program,

the United Way also knows some other resources and you can reach out to them for that.

You know, the same ladies would do in my taxes in 1972.

Really?

Same lady.

Say I've never had anybody else do my taxes, but it must be like a hundred now.

You know, this Vita program, it's very, I'm really glad that we can do this because when I first came to Racine, which was,

I graduated from Carthage in 2006, came to Racine right after that.

I didn't, you know, I didn't have any family.

I had taxes were very intimidating and I was, I never do it.

I was going through this program.

It wasn't at the library at the time, but they had a space across the street at the Racine Literacy Council.

So I benefited for years from this program.

I'm so glad we can help platform it for other people to benefit from.

Keep in mind that's how they got Al Capone, taxes.

Hopefully that won't be happening yet.

So they got John Gotti too, taxes.

They never get you for the crimes they've read you're famous for.

All right, let's talk about, we got some April May library programs to talk about.

Let's do the list.

Go ahead.

Yeah, so one thing that we are really excited about we haven't done.

And I don't know, maybe like a decade is we have our first teen lock in coming up.

So this isn't like an overnight thing.

But what we've done in the past is we have, you know, parents, you got to,

you got to sign up ahead of time.

It's a registration thing.

You need your, your parent or guardians approval.

But we do an after hours hangout.

We've set up video games.

We've set up board games.

And we just like let the teens kind of run a muck while the library is closed and enjoy

the space into themselves.

Let me throw in books all over the place.

Hopefully not.

I said run a walk.

I don't know.

There has been, you know, they'll, there's been like hide and seek or tag or whatever.

That's great though.

It can get a little rowdy.

Yeah, especially with that mysterious third floor that nobody knows what's up there.

Yeah, it's libraries got.

If you go in there, elevator floor one, floor two, and then there's a button that there's

nothing on it.

And that's like that twilight zone episode where all the mannequins are up there and they

come to life on the ninth floor of that building.

But you have a third floor.

We don't know.

The books come to life.

Yeah, all right.

All the, all the books on the character.

All the stories are there.

That's right.

Don't tell me that because I'm starting to get chills already.

I don't know if that stuff doesn't exist or not.

So this is the teen lock up.

That's lock in.

Not lock up.

That's different.

Yeah.

I know.

It's not a lock up.

So it, uh, the, the registration, um, you can reach out anytime up until Friday, April 10th,

uh, at this point, but, uh, the, the actual, uh, event itself is on, on Friday,

a lot of fun begins at five, 45 PM.

It's super fun.

I mean, just having worked it.

Not having food there and stuff.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

There's pizza, you know, we just.

Wow.

Yeah.

How old do you have to be?

Is it say, I think anyone who is technically a teen, so I think that was 13 to 19.

Wow.

Okay.

Okay.

Oh, great, great six to 12 is what we said.

I'm trying to think, how do I get into that place?

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, no.

That's.

How can I.

Wait, there goes Elvis and just walk right in.

You can come in any other time other than the team.

It was not pizza.

That's a, well, that's true.

Spring bookshales coming up.

Friend of the, uh, we're seeing public library.

Yeah.

And this is where you get rid of the books that, you know, we're old and nobody wants, you

know, nobody takes out a lot anymore and you have other copies of it.

True.

And you jump there.

We also take donations every day.

A lot of people don't know that.

But fortunately, this community is very generous with us.

And, uh, every day that we're open, we're open for donations.

Um, but yeah, the spring book sale is, I mean, we have, we have a book sale going on every single day

that we're open.

If folks don't know and what we call our book teak, but then we have two really big bookshales,

one in fall and one in spring.

Our friends of the library do an amazing job and all the money that they raise goes back

to support library programming.

But the, the spring one is, uh, third, it starts Thursday, April 23rd and it goes Friday and Saturday,

April 25th.

Um, the April 23rd is a member's only thing.

So if you're not a friend of the library, become a friend of the library, it's very

affordable.

In the first pickens.

That's right.

And, I mean, you will see it is fierce competition, man.

Uh, we, you know, I just, I just, uh, went to like a black Friday sale.

It kind of is.

I mean, it's, uh, it's an exclusive deal.

I just went to the, you know, there's a new, uh, bookstore now in western scene.

I used bookstore and I just went and bought a few books from there and they said, we

get a lot of these from your friends in the library, book sales are great.

Right now, I've got on the, uh, in the hot seat today, we've got a hot seat.

It's been okay.

I haven't asked you anything.

Not too bad.

Nothing you need.

Uh, I want to consult my attorney before I answer that question, nothing like that.

Uh, Nick Dempsky is here.

He's the executive director of the same public library.

Um, I'd like to plead the fifth amendment on that, please.

I don't, uh, I don't have anything to say on that.

This is, this is, uh, legal literacy that you're doing.

That's good.

Okay.

Let's talk about something that I'm not like in my briefcase here.

I have when I go to your local author showcasing it, all the information I can on each one

of these authors and we have them on the air.

Oh, awesome.

I didn't know that.

Yeah.

I don't want to think you don't know about me.

That's phenomenal.

This is here.

This was the one I had.

And I, I keep an envelope with all the local authors.

I pick up all their stuff and we, um, so cool.

And we occasionally bike some of them on the air with us and we've had some on the, and

not all of them.

But we've had some on the air.

Sure.

Yeah.

Yep.

This one.

Well, that one's not getting on that because you lost it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's how I met Rory Graves.

Okay.

And not only was she on the air with me, but we won first place in the Wisconsin Broadcasters

Association Best Interview.

The plaque is out in the hallway.

That's so cool.

And I had, it was from, from the local authors where I met Rory.

We had her on the air and went, take care of him when I kicked out of the building.

I'll show you.

Okay.

I and others, if we just like did a web search for Rory Graves, Don Rosen, would that interview

come up?

Oh, yeah.

No.

You don't have to even do that.

Just go to WRJN.com, civicmedia.us, Spotify, Apple Podcast, wherever, type in Don Rosen's

show.

And then it'll be, there's a, there's 12 for 500 interviews on there I've done.

And Rory Graves will be one of them.

It's like he rehearsed.

It was a, it was on Halloween about a year or so ago.

So yeah.

Congratulations on the award.

That's really cool.

Yeah.

That's a matter of fact.

We just want two more this year.

One of which I'm going to, we're going to get in May.

One for interviewing Bob Barry, the radio legend in Milwaukee, Bob Barry, and the morning

show here.

Awesome.

We don't have their first place yet.

They don't take it.

It could be first, second or third.

You have to go in person to find out.

Okay.

They just tell you, you won.

Well, you're always first in my heart, don't thank you.

Are you a voter in the WBA?

Wisconsin broadcasters?

Absolutely.

No.

Okay.

Angie, you got another one coming up?

Yes, we do.

So you put that thing to fell on the floor.

I did.

I put it back.

Yeah.

The on the last day of the Friends of the Library book sale during spring.

So Saturday, April 25th, from 10 to four, we have this amazing event called the local

author showcase.

And this is, I think, our third annual week.

We sort of did one a long time ago.

I was actually the one who put it together, but it was just a one off.

And we really loved it.

And fortunately, our head of adult services, Rebecca Leanna decided, I'm going to bring

this back to life.

And so for three years now, I think they've been doing this.

We've got, you know, a few of the names of people who are coming, a local author.

She was actually in your envelope there.

I used to Montgomery.

Milwaukee author who is amazing has, you know, she used to be the poet laureate of the

state, but Dasha Kelly, she's done a lot of work in receiving correctional institution

out here that I've gotten to do with her over the years, kind of a local legend, Gene Arnold,

a queer author, a woman in her 90s.

She owned a bookstore with her partner here and a press called Mother Courage Plus.

And the list goes on and on.

Laurie Graves is going to be there again, another, another local leader who also happens

to be on the library board, Melvin Hargrove, he just recently published a book.

There's a lot of very cool authors coming up.

And so, you know, there's, there's a few programs that we have now that are annual, that

we've got a rhythm with and that are just a little bigger.

And this local author showcases one of them.

If you only come to the library a few times this year, that should be one of the three

or four of them on from May, they can't have everybody, but we'll get to them eventually.

And we had Carol, Gene Fortay, who wrote a book, I read her book, we had her on the

year.

Just, now she's on regularly, but just talking about her book.

Amazing.

And if I see it, the other woman's name in there, I'll know what she wrote a book about.

I can't remember what it was now, because it's everything's flying to my head, but we

had her on there.

We just have a lot of people on there.

We meet them at the local authors thing and I don't promise them anything.

I said, I'm going to go through the thing and we see what's interesting and we'll get

you on the radio.

It's a really, you know, we only have so much room for these and at this point, it's

a really competitive table to get at, like way more authors apply to be a part of it

than we're able to accommodate.

So I'm glad to hear that you've been coming and you've been giving them, you know, platforming

them even more.

We collect all their stuff and we hang on to it and I read it.

Yeah.

All right.

Let's talk about, uh, quickly because we're running out of time, the financial literacy

strategies with the Marine Credit Union out there.

They're one of our sponsors here.

Oh, let's talk about the Marine Credit Union here.

Yeah.

So long story short, you know, libraries, any library worth its salt nowadays understands

that there's lots of different kinds of literacy, not just one.

And so one thing that we are focused on helping the community develop is their financial

literacy too.

So fortunately, Marine Credit Union has been a really generous partner in providing financial

literacy classes.

We have some coming, they've already done many, but we have plenty coming up.

We've got Wednesday, April 8th, Tuesday, April 21st, Tuesday, May 12th and Thursday, June

4th and the 25th.

These are from four to six PM.

And if you, you know, it's, it's not a registration thing.

You can just show up, drop in, uh, I think usually it's a guy named Aaron McCollum who's

running them.

He's just a really great guy who wants to make sure that people understand how money works

and how, how they can take care of their money and steward it well and not be broke, right?

So I think I should probably stop in sometime, one of these classes, but we're very grateful

that Marine Credit Union is partnering with us in this way.

Yeah.

We have Aaron in here.

Oh, cool.

He's a, he's a, he's a good guy to their back-on sponsors to Napier, I think.

And, uh, so we'll, we have them in here once a month.

That's phenomenal.

Yeah.

Good.

That was thanks.

No.

I like to talk about things.

I don't have a lot of.

Yeah.

That sounds familiar.

Yeah.

He and, uh, he and Marine Credit Union, we just this Saturday had another one of our big

annual events, which is called the digital literacy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, uh, Aaron and Marine Credit Union represented there, one of the partners for that

too.

So they've been really great with the library.

Table top games.

Mahjong.

My mother used to play Mahjong with her, uh, with the ladies in the neighborhood, Mahjong.

Man.

I am blown away.

I've never played Mahjong before, full disclosure, but I am blown away with how little

Chinese, um, it's a Chinese game.

It's, uh, with, it's like dominoes, obviously.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I've seen it.

Yeah.

And in public,ателей needs to go all the way with how popular it is like every single

time they, like, double their numbers, they,the last time that they were in doing Mahjong,

they're like, we have to we have to add more dates.

There's just too many people here.

And we want to talk about the, um, all the details at Rossene.

Let me get this right here.

We've seen library dot info slash calendar.

Got it.

You got it.

So, Rossene library, one word, Rossene library dot info slash calendar.

If you don't know how to spell calendar, go to the public library, get a dictionary and

it'll tell you how to spell calendar, so you can do that.

Long story short, they're on Saturdays from 10 to noon, look up the dates on our calendar

for sure.

Yeah.

Thanks for coming.

And thank you, Shake King for putting this all together.

Absolutely.

It's a great job.

Thank you.

Thank you to our whole library team.

The library is only as good as its team.

There are amazing.

Let me write that down.

The radio station is only as good as its team.

That's right.

That's right.

Nick Demsky Executive Director of the Racine Public Library.

Thank you very much.

Hey.

I love going in there.

I love going into the library.

And you still have parking meters where you can use coins.

I don't have to use my credit card because that's good because I don't like doing that.

And the only thing is, I don't think you can get a ticket because when I put the money

and I can't even see on the parking meters anymore.

It's so old that there's no way to tell if I put money in there and I put the money.

I don't know.

I don't know what's up there.

It's just going to shoot you out there.

Old cobwebs and everything.

Thank you, Nick Demsky.

Thank you.

Thanks for coming in there.