Silver Dollars & Wooden Nickels: Silver to Holiday Art Contest winners

The Nevada Appeal's "Silver Dollar" and "Wooden Nickel" feature recognizes positive achievements from the capital region and, when warranted, points out others that missed the mark.

Silver dollar: To the winners of the Kit Carson Trail Holiday Art Contest, who created works that reflected the theme "Awaiting Christmas." The winners in the three age categories, announced at the Silver & Snowflakes festival Thursday, were:

K-3rd grade: Samantha Snyder, first place; Katie Jeffries, second; Bryan Pott, third.

4th-6th grade: AnnJi Hodorowicz, first place; Elizabeth Lepe, second; Tristen Donald Ward, third.

7th-12th grade: Virginia Adams, first place; Henry Wilson, second; Erica Gallegos, third.

You can view the kids' works at the Carson City Library through December.

Wooden nickel: To the finger-pointers in Washington who are holding up extending unemployment benefits. Thousands of Nevadans will start to lose jobless benefits in December if the warm and well-fed congressmen and women don't get on the same page, and soon. Whether the money deepens the deficit or comes from stimulus funds, it needs to come, and soon. Nevada's foreclosure crisis and economic malaise will only deepen when 24,000 residents a month lose what little financial security they had left.

Wooden nickel: To the recent report that found Nevada ranks last in the nation for dropout rates. We can point to Las Vegas all day long for dragging the state down, but in the nation's eyes, the brush paints all of us, and it's not a pretty color. Fixing our education system is just as vital to our state's longterm economic vitality as a reliable revenue stream when the Legislature convenes in February.

Silver dollar: To the burst of solar projects going up in Carson City. The schools are in the planning stages of building solar arrays that could save the district tens of thousands of dollars in energy costs; the state, city and National Guard all have projects in the works or completed. That's definitely a positive step toward energy independence.