Keeping rural libraries vital requires keeping them free of charge and pushing for open access to materials. Libraries are people-centers, not warehouses for books.

Writer Wendell Berry (above) has withdrawn all his papers from the University of Kentucky in a protest of the naming of the Wildcat Coal Lodge, the name given to the new dormitory for the university's basketball players, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader. "The coal business came up, and that for me was just the last straw," Berry told the newspaper Tuesday. "I don't think the University of Kentucky can be so ostentatiously friendly to the coal industry ... and still be a friend to me and the interests for which I have stood for the last 45 years. ... If they love the coal industry that much, I have to cancel my friendship." 

Berry has been an advocate for small scale farming and an opponent of coal strip mining. He is also a graduate from the University of Kentucky and he taught there for many years. See an interview here and an article by Berry about small farming here.

The UK board of trustees approved a new $7 million Wildcat Coal Lodge last October. Coal interests largely paid for the new building. Berry wrote the university in December announcing his decision to withdraw his papers. 

The University's president and board have solemnized an alliance with the coal industry, in return for a large monetary 'gift,' granting to the benefactors, in effect, a co-sponsorship of the University's basketball team," Berry wrote a typewritten letter the Herald-Leader just obtained under the Kentucky Open Records Act.

The government has, so far, been unwilling to bust up Monsanto's stranglehold on the seed market, but it appears Mother Nature just may be able to do the job.

The Wall Street Journal writes, "Hardy superweeds immune to the Farm Belt's most effective weedkiller are invading fields, prompting a counterattack from agribusiness that could leave farmers using greater amounts of harsh old-line herbicides." (Here, but subscription required.)

Monsanto had a near monopoly on herbicide resistant seeds with its Roundup Ready products. The nation's largest business newspaper writes that as weeds develop resistance to Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, "chemical companies are dusting off the potent herbicides of old for an attack on the new superweeds." And they are engineering seeds to be resistant to these weedkillers, just as Monsanto did with Roundup.

One analyst said this "will be a very significant opportunity" for chemical companies.

In other news, pretty soon, you can go to college at Wal-Mart. 

The retailer announced that it was offering its 1.4 million U.S. employees financial assistance to take college courses online. The company will pay employees 15% of their tuition costs and will invest $50 million over three years to provide workers with tuition an other assistance. Wal-Mart says that 70% of its managers started as hourly employees. Wal-Mart has picked American Public University to supply the courses online.

Lap dances in the teachers' lounge? Stripper poles in the cafeteria? What kind of school is this?

Well, it used to be the old Pioneer school, located about 60 miles south of Champaign, Illinois. For fifty years, it was the home of 4-H meetings and classrooms. In 2002, the Neoga school district sold the abandoned elementary school for $36,800 and six months ago, it was converted into a strip joint (above), according to a story in the Chicago Tribune. 

The owners of the club have kept the school theme, according to reporter Steve Schmadeke: "The walls are hung with multiplication tables, chalkboard, a history of U.S. presidents and a poster titled 'Class Rules' that reads 'Keep hands off dancers.'"

 The club, called The School House, doesn't serve alcohol. It is the only strip club in Cumberland County -- or anywhere within an hour's drive. And the owner says it is a needed source of jobs. "This building was falling apart — we totally renovated it," said Bob Kearney, who has a one-year lease on the former school. "Nobody cared about this building until we moved in. You show me another business in Cumberland County that has created 30 jobs for people."

The Neoga strip club has had repercussions. During basketball season, students at an opposing school waved dollar bills at the Neoga cheerleaders in an apparent reference to The School House.