Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

You can still salvage 2007

Even with the best intentions, we often find ourselves at this point in the year wondering, "What happened to those resolutions I made at the beginning of the year?"

You may even be in a really bad situation because of something you overlooked or did thoughtlessly. Well, if you're reading this, you may still have a chance to turn things around.

If you are like many of the people I know, you have been throwing yourself at one challenge or another for three months and you still have a whole bunch of unkept promises made to yourself and others.

First of all, stop beating yourself up. What's done is done. Apologizing will not undo it. You probably made a judgement call on bad data or lost track of your real objectives in life. Whatever!

If anyone asks, just say that it seemed to make sense at the time.

That is the honest truth in most cases and will let you get off the topic and on to making a different future for yourself.

Now, about making a fresh start. How about right now? Not tomorrow after breakfast or next week when the family is gone. If you are interested, here is one way to do it:

The 65th Carnival of Homeschooling is up on Alasandra

Henry Cate of Why Homeschool reminds me that another Carnival of Homeschooling has been posted today and it has been dedicated to Charles Darwin, with a link to free lesson plans for the Galapagos.

We have a lot of home schooled students in Floyd County and I am always impressed with their maturity and creativity.

In my opinion, one of the absolute killer benefits of homeschooling is that children can easily get more education in a couple of hours of homeschooling than they can get from a full day of public school.

No two and a half hour commute, no endless waiting between moments of real activity.

Home schooled kids probably get 4 to 5 extra hours a day to be creative and to help out around the home or participate in the family business. That can be a serious advantage to them and their parents in today's high-pressure world.

Read this weeks carnival and learn more about homeschooling and the people who choose to go that route..

Breaking the rules is harder than it seems

This is Ed Dolinger, one of the instructors at the Jacksonville Center for the Arts in Floyd, VA. He is teaching a class called "Assemblages" which to my mind is a wicked misnomer. In my mind, the course should be subtitled, "Learn a whole new way of looking at design."

Yes, the class develops the ability to create assemblages of found objects, but in order to do this and get something out of the class, one has to throw away lots of "now I'm supposed tos" and even discard one's usual proclivity to create order out of chaos.

Creating assemblages is much harder than it looks. I spent several hours in the classroom shooting photos and this class opened me to entirely new ideas about the creative process. After years of product design, I thought I was pretty grounded in the basics of creating "new stuff" out of "old stuff". Ed's course was an eye opener.

Ed manages to guide his students through mental barriers and confusions without imposing his ideas on their creative activity. He introduces the idea of letting found objects and their characteristics drive the design process and then moves on from there to aspects of design I'd never considered.

Even though I was only there to observe and take photos, Ed's words and the creative activity of the students began to change some long-held ideas for me.

Watching this mean looking bluebird emerge from a collection of metal and wood scraps and the jawbone of a small animal was enough to inspire me to think about creating assemblages of my own.

I know for a certainty that I will never look at a rusty metal object or a broken piece of paneling in the same way again.

The Jacksonville Center offers courses in many media and their highly motivated instructors bring out the best in students. It is an incredibly supportive environment in which to rekindle your interest in the arts or to achieve a new plateau of proficiency. Check out their website at jacksonvillecenter.org

If you get a chance to take a course from Ed Dolinger, don't pass up the opportunity.

Simple pleasures are the best...

Stopping for lunch at a favorite place for comfort food and conversation is life at its best, especially when you are on the run and have more tasks to do than time to do them,

Sally Walker's Cafe Del Sol in Floyd Virginia offers home made soups that hit the spot. I enjoy their sandwiches and salads every week, but it is the soups that bring a smile to my face and restore my sense of harmonic balance.

Sally prepares these soups from scratch and her friendly staff makes sure that we get served with care. The net result is comfort and contentment.

Saturday's special soup was roasted red pepper with Gouda cheese. It was as tasty as it looks. Life should always be so good!

Keep up the good work guys!

Why is General Brooks making trouble for Michael Yon?

Michael Yon is reporting from Iraq and is doing an incredible service for the morale of our military men, but there always are those who seem to have an agenda that justifies misusing their authority. In this case, it appears to be Brigadier General Vincent K. Brooks.

Get the whole story on how reluctant hero Michael Yon ended up in Iraq as a freelance blogger who is 100% financially supported by readers and is being treated shamefully by General Brooks. Read Tabla Rasa.

I feel that Michael has consistently told the unvarnished truth in his firsthand accounts about what is happening on the missions when he accompanies the troops and he is highly regarded by the fighting men who know of his work. This is one of his photos.

Brigadier General Vincent K. Brooks was the former chief PAO (Public Affairs Officer) of the US Army. He is currently the deputy commanding general - support for Multinational Division-Baghdad.

In 2005, when the military attempted to appropriate this famous photo by Michael Yon, Brooks apparently intervened on Yon's behalf. Now, he seems to be determined to make it as difficult for Michael to report as possible.

Michael calls them as he sees them and his viewpoints seem to be aligned with the fighting men he lives with. He obviously cares for the men he goes on mission with and for many senior officers, but his views of some high level military decisions are not always flattering and this makes each dispatch compelling reading.

At a time when the military needs favorable media coverage as never before, General Brooks seems hell-bent on keeping Michael from reporting! This general's agenda needs a little examination and a lot of publicity.

I think Michael Yon's writing has earned him the right to better support from the military. Read Michael's dispatch and decide for yourself.

Springtime in Floyd

We had a break in the weather this week, so I got away from computer for a few hours.

I walked out into our woods accompanied by my cat and thought about all of the projects I had planned and had not gotten around to doing.

I am not into self-flagellation concerning undone tasks, because the time was well-spent on matters of higher priority, like producing income and recovering from a debilitating series of nasty colds. Now that Spring is here and we are well again, it's time to put the pedal to the metal and see what we can achieve before Summer arrives.

I have broken branches and fallen trees to handle as soon as the weather warms up, but we are still burning logs in the stove so I figure I have a few more weeks of cold weather before I need to begin a full-fledged assault on all of the winter-damaged trees.

I hope to use those weeks catching up with a backlog of unwritten posts and long overdue website redesigns. I am also getting the urge to write another book, but I will probably stifle that impulse and concentrate on developing several weblogs instead.

Classes have started at the Jacksonville Center in Floyd and I have already started taking pictures for next year's catalog.

Potter and Course Instructor Jayn Avery was just completing a class in Paper Clay when I took these. Paper clay is an interesting medium and opens up new possibilities for hand-built pieces.

Gretchen will be showing some of her pastels at the Jacksonville Center starting this weekend, so we have to set up an exhibit tomorrow.

She has managed to keep painting even though her volunteer workload had tripled in the last few months.

Her online gallery can be seen at artbygretchenstlawrence.com.

Post-corporate life in Floyd County

I dropped into the Cafe Del Sol for a restorative latte and was reminded again how Floyd is a hotbed of post-corporate micro-business activity.

In the space of a few minutes I met two newcomers who are engaged in creating companies from scratch. Both individuals are creating a new life after leaving corporate employment. It is probably not surprising that both companies rely on the Internet as a basic part of their business model.

In the course of our conversation, they mentioned clients who have set up their own businesses after leaving corporate employment.

If that gives you the feeling that this county is full of ex-corporate types who are retooling themselves as entrepreneurs, you are right! Some are artists, some are contractors and others are creating business models that boggle the mind. I plan on covering a few of the more unusual startups in subsequent articles.

According to one of the the sources I Googled, the micro business segment, those employing 10 or fewer employees, represents the heart of the American economic engine. Apparently 94% of all firms and 84% of employer firms would be classified as micro businesses.

As fellow blogger Lloyd Lemons puts it:

Micro-business owners are entrepreneurs. They're idea people, they're creators, they're risk-takers, they're financiers, they're managers, and they're the backbone and spirit of innovation that keeps America rolling...

An entrepreneur is a person with a good business idea who is brave enough to go out on her own--against all odds--to try to make it a reality.

I know that we have plenty of entrepreneurs in Southwest Virginia because of the large turnout we had at the recent Entrepreneur Express meeting in Floyd sponsored by the Virginia Department of Business Assistance. There are more Entrepreneur Express meetings taking place this week elsewhere in Virginia.

If you know of an interesting micro-business that I should be writing about, send me an email.

Cathy Seipp has left the blogosphere...

And we are the poorer for her untimely and fatal illness from lung cancer.

She has been a brave and witty woman to the very end. If you have not read Cathy's World, take a moment to read her blog.

She will be missed.

Yesterday, when I read her daughter Maia's account of her condition, my personal sense of loss was so great that I thought she had already passed away. One of her friends wrote me this morning and let me know that Cathy is still receiving visits from her friends and family. Our thoughts are with her.

UPDATE: Cathy died at 2:05 today.

Going to Canada this year? Think again!

Your youthful indiscretions will keep you out of Canada this year

If you have ever had a minor scrape with the law, you may be one of the Persons who are inadmissible to Canada!

You will be turned back at the border for offenses like 45 year old DUI convictions, childhood shoplifting arrests, and other minor offenses.

The sobering lesson is that if you must travel to Canada, you must apply for "a Minister's Approval of Rehabilitation" to wipe the record clear, and the process is not swift or even possible in some cases.

Tourists are being turned back at the border and there is no appeal. If you have the slightest spot on your past record, think what will happen when you and your family arrive in Canadian Customs and you cannot enter Canada with them.

This has turned out to be a vacation buster for a surprising number of stunned American tourists. It can be a career shattering event for a businessman.

If you or any of your friends are planning a Canadian trip this year, they need to read these articles and contact the Canadian Consulate websites:

Going To Canada? Maybe Not

Tourists with minor criminal records turned back at border

Persons who are inadmissible to Canada

What is happening in downtown Floyd?

On Thursday afternoon, I spotted this earnest group of men and women standing under the Floyd County stoplight and peering at the buildings in our tiny downtown area.

At first, I took them for European visitors because a guide was standing in front of them and pointing out features of nearby buildings. However, as I drew closer, I recognized the "guide" as Mike Maslaney, and some of the "visitors" as local contractors.

I found out that these 16 contractors were doing a pre-bid walk through in preparation for bidding on facade work in the downtown area of Floyd, Virginia, which will help give Floyd the look of the 1900s again.

The work is being made possible with federal grant money and local contributions. The town has received over $200,000 as part of a multi-phased grant from the Department of Transportation and $1,000,000 in Community Development Block Grant money from the Department of Housing and Community Development.

A project of this size has many members on the management team. On this occasion I met Alina Whitaker of the New River Valley Planning District Commission  who is the Program Manager for the Grant and Mike Maslaney who is the chairman of the local management team. They were leading the contractors through the pre-bid walk through and answering the many questions that came up.

For the full story of the grant and of the project so far, go to floydpress.com and read Wanda Comb's story, Going back in time.

The next big question is who will be chosen to build an "old" Floyd? Here is another shot of some of the potential players. We have a good representation from local contractors.  Stay tuned a for more news as the story develops.