Laurels to another great edition of the Summer Reading Challenge, which wrapped up this week with Tuesday’s panel discussion at the Trolley Barn. A lot of ingredients go into a successful communitywide reading initiative. You need good books, and this year’s titles ó ranging from a John Hart mystery to a historical account of Teddy Roosevelt’s exploration of an Amazonian river ó certainly filled the bill. You need a strong organizational foundation, which the Libretto Book Club provided, as it has in years past. You need a committed group of sponsors. And finally, you have to have a group of people who are eager to participate both in the reading and the discussions that good books provoke. Recently, we’ve seen public officials, education groups and others step up their emphasis on the development of reading skills in children. The Summer Reading Challenge carries that over onto the adult level. It’s a wonderful way to support literacy as well as literature.
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Dart to reports that production at Dell’s North Carolina computer plant will be shifted to Mexico and other countries as the plant shuts down. The initial rationalization for closing of the Winston-Salem plant, with a loss of 600 jobs, suggested it was largely due to softness in the market for desktop computers. Now, we’re hearing a story that’s all too familiar, and not at all surprising: It’s not the computer market that’s shifting so much as the production line. This does mean that many of the workers losing their jobs will now be eligible for retraining benefits through the federal Trade Adjustment Assistance Act. Still, it’s yet another blow for workers who previously retrained for the computer assembly line thinking it would offer more job stability than furniture, tobacco or textiles.
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Laurels to the Goodyear Blimp, which is bringing a lot of smiles to the faces of children of all ages as it plies the skies of Rowan County while anchoring here during this weekend’s races at Lowe’s Motor Speedway. What is it about a big, lumbering airship that so captivates the imagination? Admittedly, we don’t see huge blimps circling Rowan Airport every day, but it’s not merely the rarity of the occasion that captures our interest. Like hot-air balloons, their aeronautical cousins, blimps spur flights of fancy as we imagine what it must be like to drift high above the Earth in near silence. As local officials look for ways to raise the profile of the local airport, there’s got to be a marketing angle in here somewhere.