Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

Business in Floyd County

It seems like the paralysis of the last few months is wearing off. In an unofficial poll of Floyd Chamber of Commerce members last week, it appeared that most of the people I spoke to were cautiously confident about the immediate future.

Business traffic has been steadily picking up over the past few weeks as customers adjust to the new realities of life in a down economy.

For most local businesses, customer traffic is still below normal but these business owners have found ways to keep on promoting while cutting costs in every way possible.

The Floyd Chamber of Commerce held its monthly Business After Hours on Wednesday, March 18th. The event was co-hosted by Anne Vaughan Designs and the Salon and Day Spa at the Cross Creek Complex on Rte 221. The place was packed and the food was delicious. I was having such an enjoyable time that I almost forgot to take pictures.

Most local business owners work long hours and they want to get home to their families when they close up shop. These business after hours events offer an opportunity to socialize and to do business at the same time.

This is a come-as-you-are affair in Floyd and you will see investment bankers in suits talking with artisans and farmers in jeans. The conversations were animated and most of those attending were pleasantly surprised at the way business was picking up recently.

No one seemed to feel that we were out of the woods yet, but most said that they were more confident than in previous months. This tracks closely with my own observations at Floyd Custom Framing.

I am seeing an upsurge in orders for custom framing. The projects are as imaginative and varied as ever, but we are putting increased attention on keeping costs down through use of recycled materials and special buys. I find it encouraging that customers still value incorporating art into their lives even in the face of economic austerity.

It seems that customers still value the finer things in life but they are more likely to buy goods and services that offer them an unusually good deal. I'm not sure this means cutting prices to the bone. It seems that providing an unusually good customer experience with excellent pricing is a good business practice in hard times.

The local businesses that do both are still busy.

Global Warming? - The Urban Heat Effect

I am going to keep this very simple. The Urban Heat Effect does not affect nearby areas and does not contribute to global warming, but the IPCC insists on measuring it. 

Urban areas are warm due to increased area of thermal mass such as pavements and heat sources such as air conditioners and industrial plants. This is known as the urban heat island (UHI) effect.

Urban temperatures over the last 100 years typically look like this:

Rural temperatures in the same area over the last 100 years typically look like this:

Note that the urban heat trends have no effect on the rural surroundings and thus no effect on the climate in general. These measurements should have been discarded, but the IPCC includes them as contributing to global warming.

Graphs came from the Applied Information System website:
 http://www.appinsys.com/globalwarming/GW_Part3_UrbanHeat.htm

You can see more comparisons of rural and urban heating trends here.

If you look at the two sets of graphs it becomes apparent that urban areas do not affect the temperature trends of the undisturbed rural environment. 

These urban measurements are not measuring climate change, they are measuring ‘human energy production’.

If we were serious about measuring temperature trends of the earth in terms of global warming and cooling, we would completely disregard any urban measurements because they have no effect on the global climate.

The IPCC has "adjusted" the urban measurements and still includes them in their computer model. They are including heat from thousands of local heat sources even though these do not affect climate change.

Here are two videos which may give you some insight into the urban heat effect. The first is entertaining and factual. The second is just factual.

Global Warming Heat Effect

Global Warming or Global Governance - The Effect of Urban Heat Islands on Temperature Measurements

So why is the urban heat effect such a big deal?

Many MMTS stations which were in rural areas are now in urban areas. Even those in rural areas have undergone changes and may no longer be useful. The article "How not to measure temperature" describes an all too typical degradation of a measurement site.

Global Warming? - It all depends on what you measure

If you care about the future of this planet, you might want to find out for yourself how surface temperatures are being measured. Some urban areas are getting much hotter over the last 100 years while nearby rural areas are showing almost flat temperature trends over the same time.

There are several networks of MMTS temperature monitoring stations (Maximum/Minimum Temperature Systems) and they were originally set up so that the stations would provide stable measurements for many years and would not be affected by nearby civilization with its heat sources. The criteria for establishing these stations can be found here.

This is what a MMTS station should look like: rural, not urban, and with no artificial sources of heat.

CO La Junta 17 WSW, USDA Comanche National Grasslands (Timpas Site)

Unfortunately, civilization has encroached upon these once rural stations and too many of these stations now look like this one:

Tahoe City, CA (burn barrel, close by parking, tennis court surface 25 feet away built in early 1980's). These urban MMTS stations all have uptrending temperature graphs and have local heat sources that skew the results.

Current Analysis Method for determining global temperature

The current analysis uses surface air temperatures measurements from several networks:

GHCN  = Global Historical Climate Network (NOAA)
USHCN = US     Historical Climate Network (NOAA)
SCAR  = Scientific Committee on Arctic Research

Here is the graph that James Hansen and Al Gore believe is correct although I believe it is based on data from networks that do not seem to be properly audited:

In his most recent mailing James Hansen summarizes NASA's prediction about global temperatures in the near future:.

Given our expectation of the next El Nino beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance.

Could there be sources of errors that are being overlooked? A growing number of scientists and lay people think so.

In 1999, a U.S. National Research Council panel was commissioned to study the state of the U.S. climate observing systems and issued a report entitled: “Adequacy of Climate Observing Systems. National Academy Press”. 

Here is the money quote:

FINDING: There has been a lack of progress by the federal agencies responsible for climate observing systems, individually and collectively, toward developing and maintaining a credible integrated climate observing system, consequently limiting the ability to document adequately climate change.

The panel was chaired by Dr. Tom Karl, director of the National Climatic Center, and Dr. James Hansen, lead climate researcher at NASA GISS. That panel concluded that the ability to monitor the global climate was inadequate and deteriorating. Yet, ten years later, even the most basic beginning of a recovery program has not been started.

There are volunteers who are taking responsibility for this and they are surveying the stations in the USHCN network. This what they have discovered so far:

As of this year 854 of 1221 stations have been examined in the USHCN network and 69% of these stations were found to have artificial heating sources within 10 meters.
(Making them useless as a source of accurate temperature data.)

69% of the USHCN stations used for the climate surface temperature record were surveyed by teams of volunteers and were found to be much like this:

Marysville, CA (close by parking, air conditioners blowing exhaust near MMTS temp sensor, BBQ used by firefighters, cell phone tower base)

More photos: http://gallery.surfacestations.org/main.php?g2_itemId=1493
Other odd sites: http://www.surfacestations.org/odd_sites.htm

Anthony Watts of IntelliWeather has created a project surfacestations.org to do a hands-on site survey to photograph and document all 1221 USHCN climate stations in the USA.

You can be a part of the action and help with site surveys and photographs of the remaining stations to see if they conform to the standards originally established by NOAA . If you would like a piece of the action, visit surfacestations.org and sign up to survey the climate measuring stations near you.

Making money in hard times

If you have been laid off, you may have unemployment income, but you need to generate more income fast before your lifestyle goes completely down the tubes.

Here are some basic ideas that may help you through this period.

Work for someone else or on you own?

Some individuals get inspired to go out on their own instead of looking for work in an unfriendly job market. In a down economy this can make perfect sense. It keeps money coming in while you get prepared for longer range plans.

There are basically only two ways of generating income from your efforts: Finding a customer and producing what that customer needs or working for a company that does the same.

You can work as an individual or you can work as part of a group. As the economy slows down, there are fewer groups adding staff so you might be better off in some cases to use your skills directly for the benefit of a customer. If you can pull this off, you will find that you have created a whole new career opportunity.

If you have no marketable skills and are not able to promote yourself and find customers, you may be better off finding an employer but you will probably find that jobs are paying much less than you are used to and you will be competing for jobs you never considered before.

In some areas there are new openings for police personnel and other positions in law enforcement. These have come about because of the stimulus bill. The number of applicants for each opening have jumped a hundredfold because so many people are out of work. Highly qualified applicants with years of experience and college degrees are among those competing for these positions.

If you are over 45 and out of work, you may find that it takes a year to find someone who will hire you in any capacity. I recently saw a woman with years of executive experience who has finally found work in a retail establishment. She is making far less than she did before, but she is grateful for the opportunity and is giving it everything she's got.

If you are handy with your hands and have a smattering of technical knowledge, and possibly some trade experience like carpentry or plumbing, you can join the ranks of handymen and women who keep things working in their neighborhoods. I know families that supported themselves doing odd jobs during the Great Depression and know of people who are doing the same right now.

The next step up is creating a micro business that you run out of your home or workshop. With computers and Internet access, you can be as professional as you wish and your success is only limited by your ability to promote yourself and network effectively.

How do you get started?

Making money starts with talking to people and finding out what they need and want. This is not a sales pitch, it is a matter of being interested in the person and getting in good communication with them. If you are interested in them, they will probably be interested in you and eventually they will ask, "What do you do?"

This is where your elevator pitch comes in. You say, "I'm looking for work in sales", or "I house sit", or "I do custom picture framing" and you shut up.

If you have established good communication with this person, they will pick up on this and will ask you more. If they don't, just drop it and talk about other things. If you keep the conversation going, they may eventually bring it up again.

Most jobs at all levels are filled by referrals. You get referrals when people know you are looking for work and have a good attitude about it.

A Handy Free Reference

If getting work is an area where you need help. Download a free copy of Danger Quicksand - Have A Nice Day - and read the chapters on finding employment and handling interviews.

Anthropogenic Global Warming - a modern Piltdown Man hoax?

The "science" of climate change as expressed by non-scientist Al Gore and his adherents seems remarkably similar to an earlier hoax, the famous Piltdown Man "discovered" in 1912. The staging is remarkably similar. Conclusions are/were based on falsified data, people with important names supported the hoax, and the hoax was perpetrated by individuals seeking publicity and public recognition.

There are other similarities:

Once the Piltdown hoax was accepted by the Geological Society of London, there was great resistance to coming to grips with the truth.  Acceptance of the fact that it was a hoax took over 40 years.

The AGW hoax has been accepted by the UN and our current administration. Scorn is still being cast on those who question authority.  Well, there are a growing number of highly qualified skeptics who are casting light on questionable altering of data by AGW supporters.

Piltdown Man

The fragments of the Piltdown Man were thought by many experts of the day to be the fossilized remains of a hitherto unknown form of early human. It turned out to be a clever hoax by Charles Dawson, who craved recognition and membership in the prestigious Royal Society.

Approximately 1915, French paleontologist Marcellin Boule concluded the jaw was from an ape. Similarly, American zoologist Gerrit Smith Miller concluded Piltdown's jaw came from a fossil ape.

In 1923, Franz Weidenreich examined the remains and correctly reported that they consisted of a modern human cranium and an orangutan jaw with filed-down teeth. Weidenreich, being an anatomist, had easily exposed the hoax for what it was. However, it took until 1953 for the scientific community to concede that Weidenreich was correct.

Anthropogenic Global Warming

In our modern hoax, the world is heating up, the seas are rising, and the glaciers are MELTING!!!
Only the application of money and suppression of industry will save us.

The few grains of truth are buried in a sea of falsified and altered data which more and more real scientists are exposing. The links to both sides of the argument can easily be found using Google.

Take the matter of glaciers melting. That is actually true as you can see from this chart. They have been melting ever since the 1700's.  Draw your own conclusions. (click to enlarge)
 

For the entire article go to: http://www.the-cryosphere-discuss.net/1/77/2007/tcd-1-77-2007-print.pdf

I think that the sun is the primary driver of climate change and we will see a continuing fall in global temperatures during the decade 2010 - 2020. I am planning to stack away all the firewood I can. If we see a warming trend, I will welcome the longer growing season.

Thanks to The Englishman for the original link.

Artists celebrate First Friday in Floyd

Friday nights in Floyd Virginia are a celebration of country music, and on the first Friday of every month the artists of Floyd join in with art exhibits and receptions all over town.

Art lovers and artists flocked to the Art Under the Sun Gallery to see the latest offerings from Flame Bilyue, Karen Sewell, Gretchen St Lawrence, Pat Woodruff, Andrea Marshall, Cheryl Mackian and Tina Liza Jones. Visitors caught up on the latest news while enjoying tasty snacks and listing to the music of Andrea Marshall.

Next door at Wildfire Pots, McCabe Coolidge and Karen Day welcomed visitors with new pottery designs and stories of last month's work on St Johns Island in the Caribbean.

McCabe and Karen are also spearheading the local Empty Bowls campaign in Floyd which provides food for hungry school children. Their mission statement can be expressed as: WildFire Pots - Nourishing Community Bonds, Feeding People, Kindling Generosity. They are good people.

Up the hill at the Jacksonville Center for the Arts, their First Friday event featured 300 works and 55 models by members of the Floyd Figures Art Group. The Breezeway Gallery displayed details about their upcoming classes along with work produced by the instructors.

 The Jacksonville Center also had live demonstrations of Handmade Paper with Lee Chichester, Cookie Decorating with Lora Mahaffay, and Polymer Clay Beads with Teri Walters.

The economy is slowing down, but our local artists are supporting each other and keeping the vision of better times alive by creating beauty and inspiring others to create also. Almost every one of these local artists go out of their way to encourage new artists.

Every year we see a new crop of gifted people becoming active in the arts because of the cooperative spirit of these talented and generous Floyd artists. It is a great place to live if you have creative talents that you want to release.

The young lady on the right is an aspiring writer. She is getting valuable exposure to creative activity because her mother works at the Jacksonville Center. She is just one of many who are inspired by the supportive community of artists who work and teach there.

A New Era of Responsibility

I read this inspiring massage on the White House website:

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A New Era of Responsibility
"The 2010 Budget"
http://www.whitehouse.gov

Those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account—to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day—because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.
                                              – President Barack Obama

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I agree that this is vital.
Why is it then that I feel we are in this position as taxpayers?

Photo credit: popa.com

The Search-and-Buy Economy

Jeff Jarvis recently wrote an interesting article "The Great Restructuring" in which he said, " Large-scale retail will shrink and consolidate and then be transformed by a search-and-buy economy."

I think he may be on to something. It certainly applies to our family.

It takes too much gas and too much valuable time visiting distant stores to buy necessities. If we can't buy something from our local merchants, we order using the Internet.

As a result, much of what we buy, other than food, is purchased online. We search for it on Google, price it on a dozen sites, and order it online. If it is an appliance or something similar we can have it delivered to a store for pickup at our convenience.

I think the search-and-buy economy will even transform local shops and individual craft outlets. If your business is visible on the Internet and comes up promptly when someone searches "needed service + your town", you are part of the search-and-buy economy. If people have to look you up in the phone book or in the paper, it is a lot harder to locate you.

Our family buying patterns have changed so much over the past 8 years that it's hard to remember how different life was in 2001.

Back then, most of what we bought was found in area retail stores. We had DSL back then, but it was mainly used for email and web surfing for information.

Today, no store can hold the vast array of products that are readily available on the Internet. Buyers using the Internet bypass and disrupt the traditional distribution system of Manufacturer-to-Distributor-to-Wholesaler-to-Retailer-to-Customer.

Retailers and individual buyers can find helpful suppliers at several points on the supply chain for almost every product. New businesses are constantly springing up online to provide repackaging of commodity products into smaller lots that individuals and small businesses want.

These online middlemen are found on Ebay and all over the Internet. They provide competitive pressure on wholesalers and retailers alike. They buy pallet loads of products and sell them off in smaller lots and as individual items.

Some manufacturers are getting in the game themselves. I recently purchased some ready made frames from a company that has created three divisions with different names to handle sales at different levels. One division only sells quantities of 100 or more of each item. Another division handles quantities less than 100. The third division provides retail service and high speed delivery at a higher price point. All divisions sell the same items but they are set up to handle three types of customers. The websites prominently display links to each of the other divisions.

People who use the Internet to buy things soon start looking at how the Internet can help them sell things. The most interesting aspect of the search-and-buy economy is that business owners with websites can see what people are searching for and use that information to tweak their business plans.

Think of it this way, online customers broadcast their needs every time they search. If someone lands on your website because of a search term and it isn't quite what you offer, you could  invite them to leave a suggestion for additional products.

Your website doesn't have to have a shopping cart. It can be a portfolio site to educate and enlighten prospective customers. It opens the door to an email or telephone dialogue between merchant and customer. Sales happen when such a dialogue exists.

In fact, I often leave comments on sites to let the owner know how I felt about my buying experience. Online shopping seems to give buyers more opportunity to interact with business owners than in most retail stores. That may be another reason for the growth of the search-and-buy economy.

Lack of confidence in the Administration continues

Are we moving toward a cash and carry economy?

I see friends emptying 401Ks to pay off credit cards and others who are seriously discussing bankruptcy after extended periods of being unemployed. Their confidence levels mirror the downward path of the stock market.

I know at least one person who still has a job because of programs that Obama has funded.  She is an employee of a government agency and she provide needed services for veterans. She is now the sole support for her family because her husband has been laid off.

The news is not all bad, but business is way down and money is very very tight. If a check does not clear as expected, it causes noticeable ripples. In the past, volumes were high enough that one check delayed in clearing was not a big problem.

Credit card companies are revising their policies and raising their interest rates and penalties. There is a growing incentive to move toward a personal cash economy. Pay for what you need and hold off on things you do not have cash for.

In our family, we find ourselves making decisions every day that limit our buying to absolute necessities. Eating out is a rare occasion. Much of the time we pack a lunch if we are traveling during the noon hours.

Household expenditures are limited to those things that will feed us and keep the house and cars running. Our business expenses are limited to supplies and services that will actually produce revenue.

The net result is that our expenses are being reduced to stay in line with our reduced family income. At the same time, we are doing everything possible to generate more income. I see a lot of families in this area doing the same.

I do not feel that borrowing money from our grandchildren will get us out of this situation and I wish that our current administration felt the same.

I do not think the stock market will turn around until the current administration cleans house and restores confidence that laws apply to elected and appointed officials as well as taxpayers. Continuing the current course of action could bring the Dow Industrial Average down to the 5000 range.

Good intentions are not enough

The recent storm drove home the fact that good intentions are no substitute for actual preparedness.

Country living is a great laboratory for testing ones ideas about life and patterns of behavior without the awful finality of mistakes made on the open sea or while airborne. It puts you to the test and usually shows up your lack of preparedness without causing you irreparable damage.

Sunday's storm left us without electrical power from 3:30 AM on and 8 inches of snow with drifts several feet deep in spots.

Morning broke bright and clear with temperatures in the low 20's and a wind chill in the single digits. We had no water pressure and we had not stocked water in anticipation of power failure from the storm. The only bright spot was that our wood stove was keeping the entire house warm and we could cook on it if necessary.

I went out to start the emergency generator and the ever faithful Honda engine would not respond. The electrical starter worked fine but I had failed to inspect and test the generator after its last use.

I had intended to do this several times but other tasks seemed to be more urgent and the generator sat uninspected for more than a year under a tarp in the side yard.

So, I found myself removing a spark plug to find that it was so badly fouled that I could not clean it enough to get the engine running. After several more futile efforts, I set about locating a supplier who might have a spark plug that would fit this engine.

Power was still out in much of Floyd county and most of the businesses were closed. After many calls to auto part and small engine repair shops, I located a supply of this vital spark plug at Protocol Automotive in Floyd.

Protocol Automotive is Floyd's newest and most modern automobile and truck repair shop and owner Joey Kaylor came through big time. He had an entire carton of these plugs and I told him to hold two for me.

Getting into town on unplowed roads was dicey, but our Subaru made it, leaving undercarriage tracks where the snow was deepest. I am not sure we would have made it if the snow was any deeper. By this time it was almost noon.

I picked up the spark plugs and we drove into downtown Floyd to have breakfast. Almost every business and restaurant was closed, except for Farmers Supply, our wonderful all-purpose hardware store. They had suet for our birds, but they don't serve breakfast, so we decided to head on home.

I had called the Cafe del Sol earlier and they had been open, but they had finally closed up because none of their customers were able to make it into town!

On the way home, our neighbor Tom King called to let us know that power had been restored.

We went home to our home with its 21st Century conveniences restored and I went out and got the generator running in preparation for the next storm.

Our level of preparedness needs to be kicked up another notch. I think we will do better next time. It is an ongoing process.