Jordan Catholic School's annual walk-a-thon will be held on Friday May 4th from 1:30-3:00pm, with a rain date of May 11th.

Students have been collecting pledge donations with a school goal of $15,000.

Students will begin walking along the route at 1:30 Friday and will commence with Whitey's popsicles in the Farrell Hall parking lot behind the school building. Children will be dressed in brightly colored walkathon t-shirts courtesy of area business sponsors. This is a great photo op! Thank you for your partnership.

The national mood remains anxious, worried.  We have millions of Americans out of work, many of them Baby Boomers who've seen what they worked for these past 30 years disappear:  a predictable career, financial security, home equity, retirement savings. The foundation they've worked so hard to build seems to have collapsed before their very eyes.

"They feel lost. They see hedge-funders and investment bankers as having hijacked the American Dream from the middle class," says Peter Weddle, former CEO of Job Bank USA, Inc., and author of A Multitude of Hope: A Novel About Rediscovering the American Dream (www.AMultitudeofHope.com).

"Boomers - and all working Americans, for that matter - feel as if all of the opportunity has been sucked out of the land of opportunity, and they don't know how or even if they can succeed in this changed world."

But America is still the leader of the global economy and its future is as bright as it ever was, Weddle says. Why? Because Americans are individually prone to innovation and creativity, and collectively, the most diverse pool of workers in the world, he says.

"For all the unresolved immigration issues we have in the United States, we still have the best workforce on the planet.  Our diversity gives us a huge advantage over the competition in the global economy," Weddle says. "We have every kind of talent the world has to offer, while other countries such as China, India and Japan have very homogenous cultures so everyone basically brings the same talent to the table."

That talent, however, is being wasted.  The U.S. workplace has become an investor-driven market, a place where workers are treated as disposable cogs who are costs to be minimized rather than capabilities to be maximized on-the-job, Weddle says. The only way out, therefore, is something he calls "economic disobedience."  If every American stands up and demands their right to be employed as a person of talent - and if they then elevate that talent and bring it to work with them - they can reclaim the American Dream, Weddle says.

He sees Baby Boomers already beginning to do this. The number of 50- to 64-year-olds enrolled in college jumped 17 percent from 2007 to 2009, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

"These are the people who see this time as a moment of liberation - a chance to reinvigorate their talent so they can perform at their peak on-the-job," Weddle says. "And that self-reliance and individual determination is how our country will recapture its mojo."

A national human resources expert, Weddle says people don't necessarily have to go back to school or reinvent themselves. But they do need to identify their talent - their innate capacity for excellence - and take a proactive approach to integrating it into their career.

"It may be a gift for getting things organized, for resolving conflicts, for explaining complex topics in simple terms," he says. "Every single one of us has a talent and when we apply it at work, our job satisfaction - and our pay - goes up.

"Instead of work being a four-letter word, it becomes something to get excited about and to feel good about. We rekindle our self-confidence, self-respect and determination and we produce an economic revolution that restores democratic capitalism."

About Peter Weddle

Peter Weddle, a former recruiter and human resource consultant, is the CEO of the International Association of Employment Web Sites, a trade organization. He has written or edited more than two dozen non-fiction books regarding careers and employment; "A Multitude of Hope" is his first work of fiction. Weddle is the founder and former CEO of Job Bank USA, Inc., one of the largest electronic employment services companies in the United States.

On April 26^th, the US Department of Labor announced they were withdrawing a proposed regulation that would have severely limited the amount and type of work people younger than 18 years old could perform on farms.  As proposed, these onerous rules would have banned children younger than age 16 from using farm equipment like tractors and would have kept those younger than 18 from working in feed lots, grain silos, and stockyards.

As a longtime opponent of this proposal, I was relieved when I learned of the Labor Department's decision to withdraw it.  Its demise is a victory for common sense and for farm families across Iowa.

Any Iowan knows that banning young people from working on farms would strike and the very heart of agriculture in the Midwest.  Working on the farm is part of growing up.  It's part of our culture.

I started working on Iowa farms when I was in junior high.  Bailing hay, shelling corn, chopping thistles, walking beans, and detassling corn was exhausting - but it was rewarding.  We often shared a noon meal around the kitchen table.  It taught me the value of a hard day's work for an honest day's pay, and gave me memories I will always cherish.

Defenders of the Labor Department's proposed rule said it exempted children working on their parents' farms, so it wouldn't be a burden.  This made me wonder if these supporters had ever been to an Iowa farm.  Most of our farms rely on labor beyond immediate family members.  I know I spent most of my summers in the fields working for neighbors.

There are definitely hazards working in agriculture.  But few people are more aware of those hazards and how to minimize them more than farmers.  A balanced, common-sense approach to farm safety that focuses on education, safety training, and prevention is the answer - not a one-size-fits-all blanket regulation that imperils the ability of farms to function.

This was an important fight for Iowa agriculture.  And I'm glad the federal government backed down and made the right move for Iowa farms.

The German American Heritage Center will be showcasing a Volkswagen Auto Show on Saturday May 12th from 10am until 1pm. Fun for all ages, the show will be held in the parking lot of GAHC at 712 W 2nd St. Davenport, IA!

Brats and sausages will be provided by Bier Stube as visitors enjoy the cars of local collectors and those of the Bi-State Volkswagen Club!

Free admission to the show, regular admission costs for the exhibitions. This show is in conjunction with the exhibit Beetle to Benz and is sponsored in part by Lujacks. Call 563-322-8844 or email kelly.lao@gahc.org for more information.