Making Ripples: post-corporate adventures in Floyd County Virginia

Floyd Town Jubilee - a celebration of community spirit

Saturday's celebration in downtown Floyd Virginia was billed as a one of a kind celebration of music, art, food, and community spirit.

Visitors enjoyed live music in the new Warren G. Lineberry Memorial Park and sampled tasty food and cold beverages under a mostly sunny sky. 

They brought their children, their dogs, even a falcon. Everyone seemed to be having a good time.

High winds blew over a few of the tents and others turned into spinnakers and threatened to sail away, but bystanders helped furl them and the celebration continued with topless booths in some areas.

The Station on Locust Street was open to the public for the first time. This new commercial and living space featured apartments upstairs and artist studios and wine tasting on the main floor.

Not all studios are finished yet, but a few resourceful tenants like the Blue Ridge Art Connection  and the Troika managed to set up their shops during the few hours between the departure of the last contractor on Friday and the opening on Saturday morning.

 




Visitor traffic was brisk almost all day and most Floyd merchants and artist groups reported good sales. It was more like a homecoming party than a business event as people met up with other folks that they had not seen for months.



In addition to local craftsmen like Tom Phelps, there were local writer/publishers like Ron Campbell and Fred First with new products to display.

An ongoing musical performance by Tina Liza Jones and Eric Root in the Floyd Artist Association's booth attracted visiting performers and a clogger. This constantly changing presentation was a big hit with visitors and their children.

During the afternoon, visitors were also treated to a short childrens parade led by a girl on a unicycle followed by two bellydancers and a troupe of young children in facepaint and some teenagers in goth regalia and tattoos. This procession wound it way through the booths and down the street before I could get a picture of them.

Floyd's nine foot tall fairy (Alina Ever) was granting wishes to Jubilee visitors. I had to admire how she dealt with the heavy wind gusts that buffeted the town center when she was out and about. When the tents were blowing over, she simply tacked against the wind instead of disappearing over the adjacent rooftops in a whirl of blue fabric.

There was a continually changing audience enjoying the performers on the Turman Log Homes bandstand in the Lineberry Memorial Park. Jane Cundiff sent us an image of spectators and dancers that perfectly captured the mood of this jubilee.

Congratulations to all who planned this event and to the many volunteers who worked so hard to make it a success! It was an historic moment and should become an annual celebration.

Camera repair - is it a vanishing industry?

I have been getting daily use out of a Sony DSC F828 Cybershot for many years now and it is beginning to fail. I feel a real loss because this 8 megapixel dinosaur has performed faithfully for tens of thousands of shots and has a rotating back assembly which gives it great flexibility in composing shots on the fly.

Picture credit: www.dpreview.com

The prospects for getting this camera repaired are dismal. If anyone has a suggestion, I am open to considering it.

I have Googled Sony Camera Repair repeatedly and it appears that Precision Camera Repair in Enfield Ct is the official repair center for most camera manufacturers including Sony. This is really depressing news because Precision Camera   has more service complaints than the Brooklyn Camera Shops I have written about previously.

They have a great looking web site, impressive service guarantees, and a whole lot of blather about how customers can get fixed-price quotes and can track the progress of the repairs being made on their cameras.

Then, if you Google "Precision Camera repair complaints" you get about 10,100 results which is not encouraging.

I spent about an hour reading complaints and praise for Precision's repair service and it seems that complaints slightly outnumber positive reactions.

To qualify this further, the complainants generally provide names and email addresses while those who praise Precision are mostly anonymous while seeming to have incredibly wonderful service. That doesn't add up.

There were a few people who actually had good experiences with Precision and gave real names, but the majority seemed to be "corporate spin artists" who counter complaints with fantastically favorable reports. These "favorable" reports are similar to the bogus reports used by Royal Camera and the other Brooklyn camera shops that prey on online shoppers.

I have been writing for more a year about the amazing scams perpetrated by the Brooklyn camera shop known as Royal Camera, City Camera, Tcscamera.com, and bananaboatcamera.com, and Prestige Camera (aka: A&M Photo World, Regal Camera, Broadway Photo, Preferred Photo)

If you see any of those names in an online ad, look elsewhere for your purchase.

It is really discouraging to see the camera repair business descend to that same level.

Container gardening again

A few weeks ago,we caught the tail end of a special on Square Foot Gardening and it inspired me to start container gardening again, but in a new and more productive way.

I have been gardening in containers for many years, and even designed and built cedar planters to allow stand-up gardening. These planters allowed us to grow vegetables on our deck where the deer herds at Lake Monticello could not get at them.

When we moved to Floyd, VA, in 2005 I tried conventional gardening but the local deer and other varmints ate most of what we planted.

I considered container gardening again but could not get enthused because of the expense and the effort involved.

Mel Bartholomew and his Square Foot Gardening showed me how to create better container gardens for less money.

 After reading his website and viewing his videos, I realized that I had never really understood how to create potting soil. My previous container gardens were basically amended topsoil which worked after a fashion, but was very dense and hard to work with in a container.

Using some of the Square Foot Gardening ideas and incorporating my own, I created an expandable container garden out of old file storage baskets, some plastic trash bags and some landscaping cloth.

The potting soil is one third vermiculite, one third topsoil, and one third compost for which I am substituting spagnum moss, humus, and composted manure until I am making compost in enough volume. This combination is easy to work with, the plants love it and it drains well but stays moist.

Currently, I have onions, beans, peas, potatoes, parsley, tomatoes and squash coming up. Parsnips should be showing up any week now and I will be adding more containers as time and money permits. I have also used heritage vegetables wherever possible.

With the container garden sitting on our back deck, our first action of the day is to pour a cup of coffee and saunter out to see how the vegetable are progressing. It is truly satisfying as every day brings new surprises.

TV without Letterman?

David Letterman has lost all value as an entertainer.

He has made the long descent from his early wise-cracking humor to making lewd remarks about 14-year Willow Palin.

This was not an off-the-cuff remark. It was a carefully scripted and rehearsed part of the Letterman show on CBS.

His degraded attempts to throw up a smokescreen afterward show his lack of human decency.

Firms like Olive Garden, Mars Candy, and Kelloggs have no place supporting the leering comments from this long past sell-date TV figure. Great positioning guys!  Corporate America has enough on its hands without supporting sexual assault on minors.

CBS must be looking at new ways to boost ratings. What will they think of next?

Sebastian Gray suggests how to communicate viewer displeasure to Letterman's advertisers.

Country Life and Creativity

There are creative people everywhere, but it seems to me that there is more opportunity to appreciate creativity when one lives out in the country. This is certainly true in Floyd County, Virginia.

Notice, I did not say there was more time to enjoy the creativity of others. There just seems to be more opportunity to see that it is happening all around you.

In the past few weeks, I have been too busy framing pictures to write blog posts and upload pictures, but I have been able to capture some of the creative activities that make life in Floyd so interesting.

 We went to Sweet Providence Farm Market & Bakery for some produce and we reaped the additional benefit of an impromptu concert by the Houston children, Amy, Cora and John.

Later we attended a reception at the Jacksonville Center for the Arts. The entries in this "On the Edge" exhibit ranged from humorous to poignant to simply stunning.

A few nights later I saw Bob Rogers of Architectural Alternatives at the Jacksonville Center. I admire his continuing efforts to integrate architecture and life.

I am still trying to organize the various aspects of my life so I can appreciate more of this creative corner of Southwest Virginia.

I may not have free time to write, but I can still stop occasionally to appreciate the beauty of the country roads I travel.

Teaching Children to Hate

Of all the things that a culture can do, the most self-destructive is to teach children to hate. I was reminded of this when I reread an essay I wrote several years ago.

Teaching children to hate is almost the ultimate evil. It spreads the sickness of racial and cultural bigotry by replacing a child's natural curiosity with fear. 

There is a song by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young which contains these prophetic words:

Teach your children well...
And feed them on your dreams,
The one they picks, the one you'll know by.

In 2000, nine years ago, Palestinian kids were being taught to hate and kill Jews through 'Sesame Street'-type TV shows. I understand that this practice is still going on.

When I first read about this, I felt the Palestinians were setting themselves up for disaster. It is like raising a nation of "Jack the Rippers" and thinking they will be loyal and obedient citizens who will create a bright future.  The events of the last nine years have not showed this to be a successful activity.

Hitler did it in a nation stunned and apathetic after WWI. He also created the SS, one of the most despised organizations in the world at the time. Like Ozymandias, only rubble remains of Hitler's dreams.

Teaching hate is not unique to any nation. There are too many examples in the good old USA for us to point fingers at any other country. What we can do as a vast community of bloggers is to cast light into the dark corners where this despicable practice is being performed.

In today's world of weblogs, such evil deeds are impossible to hide for very long. Exposing them to public view is a first step toward bringing sanity to troubled areas that are self-destructing.

If you are in doubt about the destructiveness of teaching children to hate, take a good look at the cultures where this is being done and see whether the culture is succeeding or declining.

On the home front, you might give your kids a hug and teach them how to recognize good people.

It's a start anyway.

Teach your children well...
And feed them on your dreams,
The one they picks, the one you'll know by.

Million Dollar Ideas...

In tough times, the best and brightest often come up with an idea that transforms their lives. I have a suggestion for picking ideas that will pay off in the immediate future. For every million dollar idea there are hundreds of under $20,000 ideas which can support an individual or a family micro-business.

Million dollar ideas are a dime a dozen. For immediate results, focus on ideas that can be developed on a shoestring or a credit card. Ideas you can finance yourself and test on a small scale are more likely to bring you income and job satisfaction

There actually are an abundance of million dollar ideas to choose from, but there is only one catch. It takes many millions of dollars to develop these ideas to a point where they can be marketed and sold. Then it takes a larger amount of money to set up a system for selling and distributing the resulting product or service.

In a past life, I was in charge of product development for a company which created new technologies to solve long-standing problems of merchandise protection. It became very clear to me that there is no shortage of million dollar ideas. In fact, we had more great ideas within the company than we could implement with the resources available to us.

The million dollar idea will make money only after these actions are done correctly:

1. The idea is sold successfully to management to get funding
2. A working prototype can be made which demonstrates feasibilty
3. Tooling is developed to produce the product at a cost where it can be sold profitably
4. Packaging, pricing and sales strategies are developed for identified markets.
5. Distribution channels are created
6. All of the production bugs are worked out to produce acceptable yields
7. The product hits the market while a window of opportunity still exists
8. The product sells in enough volume to recoup the investments in steps 1-7

What conclusion might you draw from this? You probably stand a far better chance of making money with a $10,000 idea than a million dollar idea.

As an example, there was a woman in our old neighborhood who developed a line of specialty nut brittles. She installed a commercial kitchen in her home and was barely able to keep up with demand. She created a brand, Red Rocker Candies, which was practically flying off the shelves at local stores. The crucial difference, as I see it, is that she picked an idea she could implement herself.

Hang this up in your cubicle or workspace:

What product or service can I develop
with the resources available to me?

The answer to that could give you a new life and new challenges. There is always a window of opportunity. Develop something that people need now and start generating income.

In a past life, I was in charge of product development for a company which created new technologies to solve long-standing problems of merchandise protection. It became very clear to me that there is no shortage of million dollar ideas. In fact, we had more great ideas within the company than we could implement with the resources available to us.

The million dollar idea will make money only after these actions are done correctly:

1. The idea is sold successfully to management to get funding
2. A working prototype can be made which demonstrates feasibilty
3. Tooling is developed to produce the product at a cost where it can be sold profitably
4. Packaging, pricing and sales strategies are developed for identified markets.
5. Distribution channels are created
6. All of the production bugs are worked out to produce acceptable yields
7. The product hits the market while a window of opportunity still exists
8. The product sells in enough volume to recoup the investments in steps 1-7

What conclusion might you draw from this? You probably stand a far better chance of making money with a $10,000 idea than a million dollar idea.

As an example, there was a woman in our old neighborhood who developed a line of specialty nut brittles. She installed a commercial kitchen in her home and was barely able to keep up with demand. She created a brand, Red Rocker Candies, which was practically flying off the shelves at local stores. The crucial difference, as I see it, is that she picked an idea she could implement herself.

Hang this up in your cubicle or workspace:

What product or service can I develop
with the resources available to me?

The answer to that could give you a new life and new challenges. There is always a window of opportunity. Develop something that people need now and start generating income.