Editor,
It is that time of year when we arbitrarily change the time on our clocks, moving them forward and losing an hour of sleep.
Various studies find no benefit and potential negative health effects with this action. Why are we doing this?
Well, it all started during World War 1 to provide farmers and workers with more daylight during the workday and to save on energy costs in the belief that it would improve productivity.
Changes were made in 1966 and 2005. Currently, Arizona and Hawaii have seen the light and do not follow this arcane practice. A total of 19 states have passed resolutions or laws asking to move to permanent day light saving times – these will go into effect if congress acts.
West Virginia is not among these states, and maybe it is time for us to get on board with this.
The U.S. Senate passed the Sunshine Protection Act in 2022 and it is awaiting a vote in the House of Representatives.
Here is an easy way for the House to prove they can do something positive other than spending money we do not have on pet projects.
Joe Kaffl
Hillsboro
Editor,
This is a tribute to those anonymous people out there who keep the world spinning on its axis, who go about their lives helping the rest of us do what we can do. These folks undergird our society. They are the wizards behind the curtain, frantically pull-ing the levers that make things work. In our current cultural milieu where we hear the relentless lament, “No one wants to work anymore,” these folks are spending countless hours working, often as volunteers. It is time we brought them onto the stage and out from behind the curtain.
One such unsung hero was Joe Sharp, who had been the volunteer Internet Technology Specialist for eight of our community websites. Joe had retired and moved to Pocahontas County with a big dream to help create a crucial website presence for fledgling businesses, both for profit and nonprofit. When I assumed leadership of Hillsboro Classroom, Joe’s wife, Christine, asked Joe to help us. The truth is that we couldn’t pay him. Thus began a three-year business relationship between this newbie and the inimitable Joe Sharp.
Joe patiently trained me how to set up classes, keep track of registrations and create a database. I was responsible for the daily workings of the website, while Joe had access to the binary guts, the murky world of Internet algorithms. He was a Godsend for this volunteer organization as he resolved all my myriad questions. Joe Sharp was responsible for the growth and success of Hillsboro Classroom, Inc.
Joe also set up a beautiful website for Hillsboro Library Friends, allowing that organization to take online registrations, sell the Friend’s Cookbook online and accept online donations. He even created an interactive capability for the members of HLF to store records in an archive.
There is another object lesson to this post. I had told Joe a few days ago that I wanted to publicly acknowledge his contribution to our community. To that end, I planned to draft an article for the newspaper and social media. Although he never asked me to do this, it meant a lot to him that I wanted to give him much deserved credit. Sadly, Joe Sharp unexpectedly passed away a few days later, before I did the write up. We must not procrastinate when it comes to thanking our heroes.
He leaves a powerful legacy that improved our community, and I am deeply grateful for his help. I don’t quite know how to move forward because we may never find someone as willing to put in the time, patience and care that Joe did. He was a rare gift to all of us.
“If someone is retired and they want to volunteer their time and skills, they should seek volunteer organizations that can provide them plenty of opportunities. I do this because it is a challenge as well as rewarding to see my efforts help the community. When you start with an idea and take that idea to make it successful, it’s a feeling of accomplishment. I look at what I do as a responsible hobby. It also requires me to keep up with the latest technology.” ~ Wise words from Joe Sharp, unsung hero.
Joanna Cordell
Hillsboro