Pardon me while I pat our back

Five Free Press staffers and I just completed a trip to Des Moines, Iowa, for the Midwest Free Community Papers spring conference this past weekend. We all had fun together and learned lots to help us do a better job for our customers. (At least they didn?t tell me I wasn?t any fun).

It?s good to network with others in the same industry and learn what people are doing in other parts of the Midwest. The MFCP association covers 10 upper-midwest states, so they face many of the same challenges we do. We did find out that if we thought we had a hard winter here, theirs was much, much worse.

We were pleased to be awarded first place for our Web site design, and that Shelley Plett, who entered two ads she created in the ad creation contest, won two of the five top awards given in that category.

It was also gratifying to learn we are leaders in what most papers are doing as far as social networking is concerned.

There isn?t enough room in this space to relate what everyone learned, but you, our customers and readers, will be on the receiving end of much of it in the coming months.

My arm is tired of patting us on the back so will move on to other topics.

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I met a printer at the trade show from Slayton, Minn. He was a partner in a printing company with Bill Paulsen, former editor of the newspaper in Mountain Lake, where I grew up. When I told him I was born there and lived there until age 9, the first thing he said was, ?You must then be a Mennonite.?

I responded in the affirmative and mentioned that in those days there were quite a few towns with predominant populations of Mennonites and that we had moved to another one in Kansas. But I also mentioned that the makeup of these towns has changed a lot over the years.

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On the trip home Saturday, the women in the van wanted to stop at the Amish Country Store in Lamoni, Iowa. It was full of hand-made baskets and such. I wandered to the area with food products and ended up with some Triple Berry jelly, summer sausage and, yes, a harmonica.

Lots of grandpas before me have played harmonicas, so I thought it time I took a turn at it. Besides, it was only $5 and it doesn?t take much room to carry around?unlike the tuba I used to play years ago.

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The Butler Bulldogs didn?t win last Monday night, which already seems like weeks ago. If that half-court missile at the buzzer would have gone in instead of bouncing off the rim, we?d still be talking about it.

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If you?d like to see an interesting video about how fast the world is changing, go to YouTube and search the words ?Did You Know?? Watching may blow your mind.

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Grandson Louie turns 10 next Sunday. How can that be?

I?ve been e-mailing the boys lately as they now get e-mail on their iPods. They always answer within a short time. Louie e-mailed me that he was looking forward to coming to Hillsboro and swimming in the pool again.

Last Friday, Alex participated in the Georgia geography contest. I learned about this through posts on Facebook. I commented that I would like to know how it turned out and received a call from Alex right after the event. He didn?t make it out of the first round, but still has two years to compete.

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