A recent trend for community action groups has been to stage "poverty simulators," a sort of role-playing game that public officials can take part in to better understand the plight of poverty and use that knowledge to craft better policy.

Participants often report that one of the biggest challenges they face is transportation, that without a car and with limited money for bus fare it becomes difficult to do things like look for a job that might help elevate economic status.

That's the truth. Even with the plethora of businesses now accepting applications online, job searchers can easily find themselves schlepping all over tarnation just to drop off a few resumes.

So today if you find yourself in an unemployed way—that pesky recession is still kicking pretty hard— rather than hopping to and fro all effing day, swing by Boise State and check out a career fair. Businesses and organizations will be on campus advertising full-time, part-time and internship positions. Some will have on-campus interviews in the days following the fair. For more info call the Career Center at 208-426-1747.

The fair runs from 9 a.m.-3 p.m. and is free.

Do you need help clearing weeds, filing paperwork, teaching children’s art projects or manning an info booth? Tell us about it. Boise Weekly is in the process of creating a volunteer guide, so if your organization needs or accepts help from individual or group volunteers, let us know.

Send us the details of what you’re looking for in a volunteer, including age range, experience, job and time requirements, and anything else you deem pertinent, as well as contact information for would-be volunteers. Send your info to BW Features Editor Deanna Darr at deanna@boiseweekly.com no later than Friday, April 15.

People often ask me if my career in air medical emergency transport is "high stress." My answer? It really depends on the day. And that's why, on most days, I try to build in stress-reducing activities that range from taking naps to 10 minutes of yoga stretches. If I'm really lucky, I get to watch Oprah or read a current bestseller between flights.

Since my on-the-job experience is pretty foreign to most professionals, I was intrigued to read a Wall Street Journal blog the other day that described a new at-work holiday instituted by LEGO Systems. Leave it to a toy company to remind us that adults need playtime, too, right?

That left me wondering what it's like to work for Nintendo or Absolut. However LEGO doesn't limit its "Stress Free Day" to simply playing with its own products, but rather encourages that the day be spent doing any number of activities from getting a massage to taking Pilates classes—all on the clock. The only limitation is that this day only happens once a year. Me? I'd still rather spend a few minutes (or hours) of every day on the job being stress-free

In order to avoid being fitted for one of those special jackets with all the pretty buckles and straps, it's time to go public with a little bit of news which is a bit atypical for BW to cover.

As of Sept. 16, after 27 years in business, the owners of Boise Army/Navy decided to trade the distinctive scent of surplus for the fresh air of retirement by selling the business to the store's longtime manager. Those now-former owners happen to be my parents, Peter and Nancy Darr.

I've made no secret of my connection to the business, but I've always tried to step aside when it came to writing anything about it—well, most of the time at least. But now, I am going to to be completely self-indulgent and nepotistic when I say how proud I am of my now-retired parents who came to Boise with next to nothing except two young daughters and managed to create a successful business that has spanned more than a quarter century.

We hear so much about failures these days that it's kind of nice to acknowledge a success story born out of hard work.

Boise Army/Navy will go on in much the same form, so rest assured, you will still be able to find all the camouflage, gas masks, woolly winter wear, cast-iron cookware and assorted camping, outdoor gear and sometimes bizarre assortment of randomness your heart could desire. But now, it's time for someone else to guide the vision for future success.

My parents' vision is firmly focused on the shiny new world of retirement, where rumor has it you can do what you want, when you want and then flaunt your adventures to your adult children who are so far away from retirement that it might as well be Mars. But then, after 27 years, they deserve it.

Yes, generally this column is intended to help ya'll find something to do on the day at hand. However, sometimes something worth writing up happens so early in the morning that we gotta switch things up a bit.

Case in point...

But there is work to be done. Especially heading into summer when the buzz of social activity helps drive the economic engine. Only question is where to find it.

Well, tomorrow, the answer is Sun Valley, where from 11 a.m.-3p.m. the mountain resort will host a job fair, to fill both summer and year-round positions. Hiring managers will be on-site to find employees for nearly every department: food and beverage, janitorial, the hotel, rec services and the mountain department, and refreshing snacks will be provided for all applicants.

More information can be found at www.sunvalley.com, or by contacting the HR department at 208-622-2061 or svpersonnel@sunvalley.com.

Good luck to ya'll. And just to pass on a piece of job-hunting advice that this reporter had to learn the hard way: it's probably not a good idea to list Elvis as one of your references.

• Alexa, Elaine and a mid-afternoon pick-me-up.

Ten minutes ago we were staving off the post-lunch need for a nap, sucking on watered down Mt. Dew and lukewarm coffee ...

... enter the roving Red Bull crew to the rescue.

Alexa and Elaine arrived at BWHQ brandishing backpacks full of taurine, glucuronolactone and caffeine (cue Superman-esque rescue soundtrack) and started handing the stuff out.

BW spotted the ladies roaming the slopes at Bogus on closing day a few weeks ago and thought, "Gee, that'd be a cool job. Ride and hand out Red Bull? Sign me up."

Catch Alexa and Elaine Tuesday, April 27, 8-11 p.m., at the Red Bull Barmaster at Mack & Charlie's, where three Boise State students who've never been behind a bar before compete to see which one of them can make the most Red Bull drinks over three hours.

It's no secret that the national unemployment rate, (though tapered off from its peak several months ago and hovering at just under 10 percent) is still the highest it has been since the early 1980s. However, what is more alarming is the fact that, according to an article in today's Wall Street Journal, the youth unemployment rate is about 20 percent.

Wait. Does that mean that 80 percent of the Sesame Street set in this country are working? Is that even legal?

Not exactly. In the case of unemployment rates, the term "youth" refers to all workers under age 25. What that indicates is that the unemployment rate for recent college graduates might be twice as high as the unemployment rate for the general populace. This is a huge bummer, especially in light of continuously rising tuition costs. Apart from the bump in the graph on the left, there appears to be a striking similarity between the following data plots:

Since I was encouraged pretty much from the moment of conception to pursue higher education, I guess I'm glad to be older than 25, but it makes me wonder whether the benefits of having a college degree will eventually cease to outweigh the costs.

Incidentally, Tiger Woods would have graduated from Stanford University the same year I did, had he chosen to complete his undergraduate program. However, even without a degree and even with more personal problems than most, he'll make more money teeing off today than a lot of us college grads will in our lifetimes.

Every e-mail I receive is important, of course, but I'm not great at prioritizing them. And it never fails that thinking, "I'll get to that one later," inevitably leads to, "It's been three months. What the hell happened to that e-mail?" Or, worse yet, forgetting about it all together.

The I.T. Guy sent me a video by tech writer Gina Trapani about taking control of my e-mail inbox. I'm putting it into practice tonight.

Click Control Your E-Mail Inbox With Three Folders to watch.

If it changes my life, I'll post an update. If it doesn't, I'll pretend I never heard of the whole plan and forget about the post all together.

As A&E Editor Amy Atkins ruined her home manicure removing old La Presa Libre stickers from distribution boxes BW inherited from the Idaho Press Tribune, she asked if all the scraping and scrubbing was in her job description.

Yep, I said. It says somewhere in the handbook that all job descriptions at BW include "other duties that may be asked from time to time." This qualifies.

But hey, at least we got to sit in the sunshine for half an hour.

Already, this has been a long week. I'm putting finishing touches on the last issue of Idaho Arts Quarterly for which I will serve as editor. The summer issue will be heralded with the roll out of a new and improved edition and I'm excited to see how it looks. Long-time IAQ and BW contributor Katy Dang will sit in the captain's seat as the new IAQ editor bringing a wealth of new ideas to the table. I will continue in my role as BW A&E editor and will assist Katy in any way that I can in her new endeavor.
I caught Philadelphia punk band the A.K.A.'s at the Venue on Monday. They played a few tunes off their upcoming new release Everybody Make Some Noise! and plenty songs off their last Fueled By Ramen release. It was such a fun show and after interviewing lead singer Mike Ski, it was great to meet him in person. He's adorable and has a great sense of humor as well as a terrific stage presence.

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