This is Viewpoints for Friday, May 6, 2016

Great showing

It was with great pride that I reviewed the results of Round 1 of the GHSA Girls State Soccer Tournament on Friday for region 2-AAA to discover that all four Middle Georgia high schools (Peach County, Jackson, Central and Rutland) won their games and will advance to the next round. Congratulations ladies. This was probably the hottest day of 2016 and all of gave it their best effort. Soccer players run an average of seven miles per game, so all the teams got quite a workout on a very hot day. We must remember that all of these teams, regardless of the final score on Friday, are winners. They can’t play in this tournament unless they finish in the top four in their respective regions.

These girls deserve recognition in our local sports pages. As is, I can’t wait until to go back to the GHSA website and see the results of Round 2. Wouldn’t it be awesome for the semi-finals and the finals to be played just between Middle Georgia teams?

Library needs more friends

I applaud the recent visit of Al Roker and his wife, Deborah Roberts, to the Houston County Library in Perry on Saturday April 30 for two hours as part of their new book tour across America. Hopefully this was also a fundraiser for new books for our beautifully renovated library. Their sad book collections need new books.

Hopefully, the visitors on Saturday to meet Roker and his Perry-born wife will notice the generally mediocre collections of library materials in the Perry library. They are admittedly enclosed in an attractive building that basically houses the tired old books from the old library before renovation.

Our county commissioners have refused to increase the library materials budgets for books, magazines and audio-visual materials even after I appeared before them and asked them to do so. Not a surprise. Too many of the children and fiction books are old and tattered.

If only our county commissioners and library board members would allow this former professional librarian to show them the sad state of too many library books and other materials. Let me show the library board members the sad state of our collections. Unless they use white canes they would see what I mean.

The Friends of the Library usually raise $35,000 or so annually for new books, etc. Less than $12,000 for each library. That’s peanuts.

Head in the sand

I can understand why the Republicans and Fox want to block everything Democratic and Obama, but their intransigence has reached new level of absurdity. Senate (and no doubt congressional) Republicans have now taken it upon themselves to block funding to the CDC to prevent study of the Zika virus as it silently infiltrates its way into the U.S.A. Ironically, the same folks who scream about abortion now block efforts to protect fetuses from the catastrophe that is Zika.

Zika is for real, and it is at our doorstep. It will result in a large population of microcephalic babies. Microcephaly may sound like just another medical term of nebulous meaning. Try this definition: irreversibly, profoundly brain damaged as a fetus with a life to follow of total dependency on others and little chance of independence and self-determination. The societal and socioeconomic sequelae will be extraordinarily expensive in both money and broken hearts. And, after denying funds to first even study the virus, here in the South, where it will hit hardest, our Obama averse Republican elected officials will probably choose, as being done now, to withhold or severely limit Medicaid funding from the children and families that will need help the most.

Zika also seems to disproportionately affect certain adults with serious neurological complications, such as Guillain-Barre syndrome. Maybe the virus will also show tropism for stubborn, head-in-the-sand legislators. If rich white men were to be affected, maybe something would be done.

Goodwill Industries Week

Though recent figures suggest employment prospects are improving, persistent challenges remain in the labor market. A report by the U.S. Department of Labor indicates the number of people applying for jobless benefits is the lowest since March 1973, yet there are still thousands of people looking for jobs even as many job openings remain unfilled.

While some economists believe the economy is creating thousands of jobs, in many industries there are more openings than workers available to fill them. Many believe these unfilled jobs are vacant because the workers lack the skills and training to qualify for them.

Goodwill Industries of Middle Georgia Inc. and Helms College are joining with autonomous Goodwill® organizations throughout North America to help close the skills gap, serving as a resource for training in the community to help connect people to employment. Goodwill has helped people go to work since 1902, training individuals for careers in fields such as distribution/logistics, hospitality, health care and environmental services. Goodwill provides education, employment, job training and other community-based programs for people with disabilities or other barriers to employment.

At Goodwill, we believe that work creates the economic energy that builds strong families and strong communities. The first week in May commemorates Goodwill Industries Week. Celebrated since 1951, Goodwill Industries Week is an important time to show appreciation to the 650 local Goodwill employees and features a number of events to help workers train for, find and keep good jobs.

Those who already have stable employment can provide a hand up to those who don’t simply by donating household items and clothing or a vehicle to Goodwill. Those donations are sold in Goodwill retail training stores, and more than 86 cents of every dollar in Goodwill revenue helps fund job training, education and placement services.

Thank you for helping Goodwill as we build lives, families and communities, one career at a time.

This story was originally published May 5, 2016 at 9:32 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Friday, May 6, 2016."