In Wilkes County, North Carolina, land of vanished mills and furniture factories, many young people are baffled about life after high school. Military recruiters, by law, have access to public school students; in Wilkes County, they've been able to sit down with teens in the lunch room and discuss the benefits of service in the armed forces. Until recently, the Wilkes district also permitted "counter-recruiter" Sally Ferrell on its high school campuses, too.

Ferrell, a Quaker, gave students pamphlets about AmeriCorps and talked with them about alternatives to enlisting. "All we want to do is make students aware that there are other ways to find college money and serve your country without joining the military," she said. "We want to save lives."

Three Wilkes Countians have died already in the Iraq War.

Now Superintendent Stephen Laws has told Ferrell she can no longer come on campus. "We allow recruiters into the schools to recruit for post-high school opportunities," said Laws, "But she wasn't offering that." Laws' decision has the backing of the local school board.

The American Civil Liberties Union's North Carolina Chapter is now involved and plans to take up Ferrell's case as a First Amendment issue.

(See the Yonder's report on how rural communities are disproportionately bearing the burden of the Iraq War.)

Since 1999 the Rural School and Community Trust has been spreading the message that good schools go hand in hand with strong communities. Their mission is to "help rural schools and communities get better together."

Now, after nearly 10 years directing the national nonprofit, founding president Rachel Tompkins has announced that she will be retiring in June 2009. The board of directors has launched a national search to find her replacement.

The Rural Trust has established itself as a major advocate for rural communities and their schools. The organization has a $2 to $3 million annual budget, employs a staff of 27, and is working on a new program, the Rural School Innovation Network, which will offer a range of services to rural schools on a fee-for-service basis. It's a big job, and anyone who follows public education knows there's no likelihood that education issues will get any easier in the coming years.

Want to see what size feet you need to fill the shoes of president of the Rural School and Community Trust? The organization has a job description and other information posted on their website: www.ruraledu.org.

Along the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi, most people were still reeling from the 2005 hurricanes. So reported Michael May in two superb stories for Weekend America (8/30). Eerily, his radio features were broadcast just two days before Gustave ripped the rural coast again.

May met the Conners' living in a FEMA trailer (their own home was washed away) in Cameron, LA; shrimper Lesley LeBoufe whose livelihood is vanishing as tides wash the marshland away; and wheelchair-bound Betty Davis, "still waiting" for housing in East Biloxi, as the nearby casinos (rebuilt fast with federal money) rake in more money than before Katrina hit.

These two radio stories capture both the cruel aftermath of the storms three years ago and the determination of Gulf Coast residents to reclaim their homeland. Here are people, May writes, who know a "Cajun miracle" when they find one: "A blessed moment of comfort followed by another hard turn."