When Drew Moore aboriginal absolved assimilate a bounded football acreage for convenance on a Clarksburg Sports Association football aggregation added than a year ago, he was a little afraid about getting able to accomplish accompany with his new teammates.
The now 9-year-old Germantown citizen said that the aggregation bound accustomed him, abnormally one person.
“I was a little bit afraid that no one would like me, but anybody was absolutely nice,” Drew said. “Aidan was the nicest to me.”
“Before convenance [when we aboriginal met] we consistently played on these monkey confined together,” Aidan McCloskey, 8, said. “We admonish anniversary added if we overlook anything. … We’re just absolutely abundant friends.”
Drew and Aidan are best accompany and, according to Brian McCloskey, Aidan’s ancestor and CSA president, a real-life representation of what the bounded alignment is all about.
“They’re two peas in a pod,” he said. “What we wish to do is advance these kids into Clarksburg association citizens. The big account is that we are absolutely aggravating to breeding the association through the kids that participate.”
The adolescence sports affairs in Clarksburg offers 14 altered sports for kids alignment from angry to accouterment football. Started in 2005, the adolescence sports alignment works to adapt breadth accouchement for the challenges of activity “through able-bodied competition, teamwork and development of comestible relationships.”
CSA serves about 1,500 apprentice athletes, a lot of of whom ambit in age from 6 to 14. In the leagues’ four seasons, accord has developed anniversary year.
Sports camps, clinics and a aggregation for accouchement with disabilities aswell are available.
McCloskey said, forth with sports, the affairs aswell focuses on assuming in the classroom and mentorship from earlier athletes.
“I anticipate sports accord appropriately [with academics] in a child’s development. They abode you in a bearings area you accept to claiming yourself,” he said. “We try to see [the kids] accomplish acceptable decisions about their time. We try to breeding that so that they wish to apprentice and they wish to get acceptable grades.
“We commonly ask the top academy players to appear by practice. They’ll talk, and they’ll drillmaster them and affectionate of appearance them the ropes of getting acceptable kids, getting acceptable citizens,” McCloskey said.
To abutment that focus, the accumulation formed to accommodate the aboriginal anniversary Clarksburg Sports Association scholarships this year. The two $500 scholarships were awarded to two Clarksburg Top Academy seniors — Oscar Cruz and Jacquelyn Young — who excelled both academically and athletically. The alignment is aswell currently alive on an after-school affairs that will cover apprenticeship services.
The administrator of the program, McCloskey said, has accomplished for about 25 years in Montgomery County Public Schools, and the accumulation hopes to accept it up and active in eight months.
“We’re traveling to actualize a safe abode for [the] kids to go afterwards school,” he said. “We’re traveling to blow on all the sports, so it’s a ample program.”
McCloskey, who aswell is a clue drillmaster with CSA, said seeing the adults that the participants about-face into and the band amid the parents and coaches has kept him advancing aback with his 5 accouchement anniversary year.
2012年6月26日星期二
Bird adds to fable with Pacers
Larry Bird's time with the Indiana Pacers became the absolute aftereffect to his allegorical NBA career.
NBA greats don't generally become front-office experts. Afterwards some stumbles, Bird came close.
He was a drillmaster first, and a appropriate one, helped by the actuality he had Reggie Miller about arch the aggregation to the NBA Finals. Bird afresh was a decision-maker already he accomplished the foreground appointment abounding time, close in his beliefs, necessarily absent to criticism.
He fabricated some adventurous moves, including replacing Isiah Thomas as drillmaster and afterwards departing business agency with his acquaintance Rick Carlisle. He fabricated some mistakes, too. Two words appear foremost to mind: Ron Artest. He stood by Artest too continued (remember the Sports Illustrated cover?) until assuredly the Pacers had to dump the accomplished headache.
Bird's credible abruptness abandonment afterwards acceptable this year's NBA Controlling of the Year accolade – a lot of anticipation he would acknowledgment as aggregation admiral until the Indianapolis Star bankrupt the account Tuesday morning – agency his abiding bequest with the Pacers is the accepted team.
While he may acknowledgment to the NBA in some accommodation again, he leaves the Pacers in their best appearance in a decade.
He promised to clean the aggregation afterwards it aching bedrock basal with the Artest-induced “Malice in the Palace.” He came through on his promise, too, as this year's aggregation becoming a playoff anchorage with a able almanac and were aural afterimage of animadversion out the ultimate NBA best Miami Heat.
Several moves angle out in architecture the accepted team. Among added decisions, Bird:
Promoted Frank Vogel, analysis he's the blazon of adolescent drillmaster who, like Miami's Erik Spoelstra and Oklahoma City's Scott Brooks, understands today's players and today's game. Vogel took over as an acting drillmaster and becoming Bird's and his players' respect.
Signed adept David West, who brought courage and adeptness to the team, an abstract bare for a almost adolescent team.
Drafted and encouraged the development of Roy Hibbert. By the time of this year's playoffs, Hibbert came into his own as a big man with assorted abilities – an invaluable asset in a guard-heavy league.
Drafted Paul George in 2010, bringing the Pacers a able bouncer who can fit calmly with any blazon of active mate, whether accelerated Darren Collison (another abundant acquisition) or the quick but added advised George Hill.
The Pacers were too young, and no bout for LeBron James and Dwyane Wade if the two Heat superstars aloft their bold afterwards the Pacers took a 2-1 playoff alternation lead.
It would accept been absorbing to see how Bird would accept absitively to bolster this team, drafting addition section and conceivably award that missing superstar every NBA Finals adversary needs.
Now the next catechism is who molds the Pacers from here, and it looks to be some admixture of Kevin Pritchard and the acknowledgment of Bird's predecessor, Donnie Walsh. They've got affluence to plan with, acknowledgment to Bird.
Transforming from superstar amateur into front-office able is a above leap, as Michael Jordan could absolutely attest. Bird had a few credibility in his time with the Pacers area admirers and critics were calling for his ouster. The cries were loudest during the closing allotment of the Artest period, which was aswell dotted with off-court problems of added players. The Pacers absent admirers during that stretch, and some of that was Bird's acceptance in players who didn't pan out.
Fortunately, Herb Simon and the Pacers' buying captivated close in their acceptance in Bird. He apparently becoming some added account of the agnosticism because of his cachet as an NBA legend. But that could alone go so far.
Bird vowed to clean the authorization from its base afterwards the affray in Detroit, and he vowed to do it by bringing in players who would represent the authorization with class.
Bird's front-office assignment will never rank with his cachet as a player. He was one of the NBA's best greatest players. That won't be his bequest as an executive, if there even is such a ranking.
But Bird's role as an controlling showed some similarities to his time as a player. He blood-soaked in aggregate he could, he abstruse what formed and what didn't. He begin a way to apprehend his openings and acquisition the players who could best advice him accomplish his goals. He didn't abdicate if times got tough.
NBA greats don't generally become front-office experts. Afterwards some stumbles, Bird came close.
He was a drillmaster first, and a appropriate one, helped by the actuality he had Reggie Miller about arch the aggregation to the NBA Finals. Bird afresh was a decision-maker already he accomplished the foreground appointment abounding time, close in his beliefs, necessarily absent to criticism.
He fabricated some adventurous moves, including replacing Isiah Thomas as drillmaster and afterwards departing business agency with his acquaintance Rick Carlisle. He fabricated some mistakes, too. Two words appear foremost to mind: Ron Artest. He stood by Artest too continued (remember the Sports Illustrated cover?) until assuredly the Pacers had to dump the accomplished headache.
Bird's credible abruptness abandonment afterwards acceptable this year's NBA Controlling of the Year accolade – a lot of anticipation he would acknowledgment as aggregation admiral until the Indianapolis Star bankrupt the account Tuesday morning – agency his abiding bequest with the Pacers is the accepted team.
While he may acknowledgment to the NBA in some accommodation again, he leaves the Pacers in their best appearance in a decade.
He promised to clean the aggregation afterwards it aching bedrock basal with the Artest-induced “Malice in the Palace.” He came through on his promise, too, as this year's aggregation becoming a playoff anchorage with a able almanac and were aural afterimage of animadversion out the ultimate NBA best Miami Heat.
Several moves angle out in architecture the accepted team. Among added decisions, Bird:
Promoted Frank Vogel, analysis he's the blazon of adolescent drillmaster who, like Miami's Erik Spoelstra and Oklahoma City's Scott Brooks, understands today's players and today's game. Vogel took over as an acting drillmaster and becoming Bird's and his players' respect.
Signed adept David West, who brought courage and adeptness to the team, an abstract bare for a almost adolescent team.
Drafted and encouraged the development of Roy Hibbert. By the time of this year's playoffs, Hibbert came into his own as a big man with assorted abilities – an invaluable asset in a guard-heavy league.
Drafted Paul George in 2010, bringing the Pacers a able bouncer who can fit calmly with any blazon of active mate, whether accelerated Darren Collison (another abundant acquisition) or the quick but added advised George Hill.
The Pacers were too young, and no bout for LeBron James and Dwyane Wade if the two Heat superstars aloft their bold afterwards the Pacers took a 2-1 playoff alternation lead.
It would accept been absorbing to see how Bird would accept absitively to bolster this team, drafting addition section and conceivably award that missing superstar every NBA Finals adversary needs.
Now the next catechism is who molds the Pacers from here, and it looks to be some admixture of Kevin Pritchard and the acknowledgment of Bird's predecessor, Donnie Walsh. They've got affluence to plan with, acknowledgment to Bird.
Transforming from superstar amateur into front-office able is a above leap, as Michael Jordan could absolutely attest. Bird had a few credibility in his time with the Pacers area admirers and critics were calling for his ouster. The cries were loudest during the closing allotment of the Artest period, which was aswell dotted with off-court problems of added players. The Pacers absent admirers during that stretch, and some of that was Bird's acceptance in players who didn't pan out.
Fortunately, Herb Simon and the Pacers' buying captivated close in their acceptance in Bird. He apparently becoming some added account of the agnosticism because of his cachet as an NBA legend. But that could alone go so far.
Bird vowed to clean the authorization from its base afterwards the affray in Detroit, and he vowed to do it by bringing in players who would represent the authorization with class.
Bird's front-office assignment will never rank with his cachet as a player. He was one of the NBA's best greatest players. That won't be his bequest as an executive, if there even is such a ranking.
But Bird's role as an controlling showed some similarities to his time as a player. He blood-soaked in aggregate he could, he abstruse what formed and what didn't. He begin a way to apprehend his openings and acquisition the players who could best advice him accomplish his goals. He didn't abdicate if times got tough.
2012年6月25日星期一
Born to be Wyld
Up until a brace of weeks ago, The Wyld was The Wild. While it ability be just one letter, it seems in a apple area bands reside and die by technology, a 'y' makes all the difference, abnormally if your admission anthology is about to be released.
The Auckland hip-hop/rock bandage was built-in about two years ago if Kiwi bedrock guitarist Joe Pascoe teamed up with adolescent architectonics student, and Sudanese poet-turned-rapper, Mo Kheir and American accompanist Brandon Nigri.
But it wasn't until the bandage started gearing up for the absolution of Preface after this anniversary that their name became a something of a problem.
"No one was award us online. If you Google The Wild New Zealand, you get pictures of kiwis and the forest. So it was like 'okay, we charge to analyze ourselves in some way', and if we adapt the spelling, it wouldn't be too abundant of a change - we were added Googleable.
"In this day and age with the internet and everything, you actually accept to set yourself up to be searchable, I guess," says Nigri.
And if you do get to The Wyld, you acquisition a three-piece bandage cartoon from abstracted walks of action to actualize a complete that combines the brand of Bon Iver and Black Keys with Kheir's Kanye West-like swagger, with an accentuate of bouncing accurate electronica.
After honing their complete with amaranthine bedchamber jam sessions, Kheir emailed a audience to acclaimed American music blog Pigeons and Planes, creating a flurry of internet action and some able absorption from US almanac labels admiring to the different sound. A complete he says comes decidedly naturally.
"A lot of humans accept he's pop, I'm hip hop and he's rock, and together, dum dum dum... but we adulation and accept to anniversary others amount genres and if we accomplish music, we accept to be blessed with the artefact we've created, so it moulds absolutely easily," says Kheir.
"We can be a little added hip hop on some of the tracks, or a little added rock, but it's fun to agreement with that."
Experiments and plans, are two things The Wyld accept a close butt of. The bandage is acquisitive to go far with their up-coming album, but they aswell wish to accept a duke in added than just the sound.
"When you are authoritative music, you about do accept a bit of a movement going... we try to accept our easily in aggregate that is creative, and to do with aesthetics and the visuals of the band," Kheir says of the band's strong, minimalist look
"We love, not just the music, but the being about it. There's the videos and abstraction those and the images. It's a acceptable affair to accept your easily in and be a allotment of the accomplished artistic process."
"One of the affidavit we alleged the anthology Preface is it was heralding something added that was advancing after on down the track, as we confused through our analysis of what we could achieve," says Nigri.
The Auckland hip-hop/rock bandage was built-in about two years ago if Kiwi bedrock guitarist Joe Pascoe teamed up with adolescent architectonics student, and Sudanese poet-turned-rapper, Mo Kheir and American accompanist Brandon Nigri.
But it wasn't until the bandage started gearing up for the absolution of Preface after this anniversary that their name became a something of a problem.
"No one was award us online. If you Google The Wild New Zealand, you get pictures of kiwis and the forest. So it was like 'okay, we charge to analyze ourselves in some way', and if we adapt the spelling, it wouldn't be too abundant of a change - we were added Googleable.
"In this day and age with the internet and everything, you actually accept to set yourself up to be searchable, I guess," says Nigri.
And if you do get to The Wyld, you acquisition a three-piece bandage cartoon from abstracted walks of action to actualize a complete that combines the brand of Bon Iver and Black Keys with Kheir's Kanye West-like swagger, with an accentuate of bouncing accurate electronica.
After honing their complete with amaranthine bedchamber jam sessions, Kheir emailed a audience to acclaimed American music blog Pigeons and Planes, creating a flurry of internet action and some able absorption from US almanac labels admiring to the different sound. A complete he says comes decidedly naturally.
"A lot of humans accept he's pop, I'm hip hop and he's rock, and together, dum dum dum... but we adulation and accept to anniversary others amount genres and if we accomplish music, we accept to be blessed with the artefact we've created, so it moulds absolutely easily," says Kheir.
"We can be a little added hip hop on some of the tracks, or a little added rock, but it's fun to agreement with that."
Experiments and plans, are two things The Wyld accept a close butt of. The bandage is acquisitive to go far with their up-coming album, but they aswell wish to accept a duke in added than just the sound.
"When you are authoritative music, you about do accept a bit of a movement going... we try to accept our easily in aggregate that is creative, and to do with aesthetics and the visuals of the band," Kheir says of the band's strong, minimalist look
"We love, not just the music, but the being about it. There's the videos and abstraction those and the images. It's a acceptable affair to accept your easily in and be a allotment of the accomplished artistic process."
"One of the affidavit we alleged the anthology Preface is it was heralding something added that was advancing after on down the track, as we confused through our analysis of what we could achieve," says Nigri.
2012年6月24日星期日
What they’ve learned
Inquirer, on annual of copresentor Nokia Philippines, accumulated calm again the 5 finalist teams in the My Dream Annual (MDI) claiming for a meet-and-greet with the paper’s admiral and editors, as able as the appliance of the Nokia Asha 200 adjustable phones to the accession members, including their teacher-coaches.
The teams anecdotal their adventures during their dream interviews with science drillmaster Dr. Josette Biyo, prima ballerina Lisa Macuja-Elizalde, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, abettor Manny V. Pangilinan and Rappler authentic editor Maria Ressa.
Three teams allocation achievement what they’ve abstract from their summer arrangement with their dream VIPs. The added two teams, Malayan High School of Science and Quezon National High School, will acquire their changeabout in attainable issues.
Special acceptance to Maynilad for its advancement of the MDI workshops, to the University of the Philippines-Baguio and Cebu Daily News for authentic their accessories attainable as annex sites, to the Inquirer Northern Luzon and Visayas bureaus, to the Inquirer editors who served as lath and to Cabalen for the merienda buffet.
The multiawarded science drillmaster from Iloilo, Dr. Josette T. Biyo, accustomed us an annual for the Inquirer-WAN-Ifra My Dream Annual contest.
We abstract so abounding from her—not abandoned about best practices in teaching science but, added important, about values. Dr. Biyo is a woman of actualization and abounding faith. Her amore for excellence, applause for plan and allegation to annual say it all.
Being in a allowance for two hours with anyone abounding can change your perspective. If we larboard her office, I said to myself: “This is the affectionate of accepting I ambition to be.”
She showed me that my dreams and aspirations could arise authentic if I actually basic them. Her antecedent advancing and motivated her to do the best not abandoned for herself and her ancestors but aswell for society. Annual is added attributes to her. She has a abounding amore for teaching and I abstract that acquirements is the best way to apperceive how to teach.
Dr. Biyo helped me acquire that action is not afterwards difficulties. You could not adeptness the top of a affluence if you did not acquire the backbreaking climb.
Dr. Biyo able me that apparent did not actualization weakness because it adapted courage to cry. I abstract that, while you could not consistently acquire the simple way out, God would consistently be by your side. Marie Louise B. Boncan
We chose Dr. Biyo because a planet was alleged afterwards her. Also, she is an amazing teacher. Teachers like her acquire a big appulse on our lives.
The a lot of memorable appointment for me was if she said: “Life is not about accepting comfortable, it’s about authentic a difference.” She sacrificed so abounding to admonition the bodies in need. As a teenager, I see my aeon absent to acquire the newest gadget, to be the a lot of fashionable or to apperceive the latest gossip. I’ve able I do not allegation those things.
Our annual with Dr. Biyo was a once-in-a-lifetime associate and an befalling to amateur added about action and love.
First, you acquire to applause your plan so “it ceases to be work.” As she anecdotal her hardships, she said she did not accordance up because she knew that God would provide. This bogus me reflect: “Could I anytime applause God this much?” I activate myself adverse this life-changing canon of faith.
Another appointment she accumulated with us was this adduce from Mother Teresa: “We are not achievement to do big things, but we are achievement to do babyish things with abounding love.”
After the interview, I able that this angel was actually great. God was so affectionate to abounding it with loving, amative and admirable bodies like Dr. Biyo. I apprenticed to do one big thing: Put applause in all the things that I do.
I aswell abstract abounding about teamwork. I abstract how to allocation my annual and, at the above time, be a able listener. Karen Racelis
As the girls would say, acquirements is a two-way street. I aswell abstract from them during the process.
Dr. Biyo broke into tears as she anecdotal her difficulties and trials in life. That moment was absolute melancholia and was actually a acquirements associate for me.
Often, we acquire to achieve boxlike decisions about plan and family, about belief and dreams. It takes a lot of adventuresomeness and actualization to leave aback a able action to achieve a abnormality in the lives of accoutrements of boyish people.
The teams anecdotal their adventures during their dream interviews with science drillmaster Dr. Josette Biyo, prima ballerina Lisa Macuja-Elizalde, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, abettor Manny V. Pangilinan and Rappler authentic editor Maria Ressa.
Three teams allocation achievement what they’ve abstract from their summer arrangement with their dream VIPs. The added two teams, Malayan High School of Science and Quezon National High School, will acquire their changeabout in attainable issues.
Special acceptance to Maynilad for its advancement of the MDI workshops, to the University of the Philippines-Baguio and Cebu Daily News for authentic their accessories attainable as annex sites, to the Inquirer Northern Luzon and Visayas bureaus, to the Inquirer editors who served as lath and to Cabalen for the merienda buffet.
The multiawarded science drillmaster from Iloilo, Dr. Josette T. Biyo, accustomed us an annual for the Inquirer-WAN-Ifra My Dream Annual contest.
We abstract so abounding from her—not abandoned about best practices in teaching science but, added important, about values. Dr. Biyo is a woman of actualization and abounding faith. Her amore for excellence, applause for plan and allegation to annual say it all.
Being in a allowance for two hours with anyone abounding can change your perspective. If we larboard her office, I said to myself: “This is the affectionate of accepting I ambition to be.”
She showed me that my dreams and aspirations could arise authentic if I actually basic them. Her antecedent advancing and motivated her to do the best not abandoned for herself and her ancestors but aswell for society. Annual is added attributes to her. She has a abounding amore for teaching and I abstract that acquirements is the best way to apperceive how to teach.
Dr. Biyo helped me acquire that action is not afterwards difficulties. You could not adeptness the top of a affluence if you did not acquire the backbreaking climb.
Dr. Biyo able me that apparent did not actualization weakness because it adapted courage to cry. I abstract that, while you could not consistently acquire the simple way out, God would consistently be by your side. Marie Louise B. Boncan
We chose Dr. Biyo because a planet was alleged afterwards her. Also, she is an amazing teacher. Teachers like her acquire a big appulse on our lives.
The a lot of memorable appointment for me was if she said: “Life is not about accepting comfortable, it’s about authentic a difference.” She sacrificed so abounding to admonition the bodies in need. As a teenager, I see my aeon absent to acquire the newest gadget, to be the a lot of fashionable or to apperceive the latest gossip. I’ve able I do not allegation those things.
Our annual with Dr. Biyo was a once-in-a-lifetime associate and an befalling to amateur added about action and love.
First, you acquire to applause your plan so “it ceases to be work.” As she anecdotal her hardships, she said she did not accordance up because she knew that God would provide. This bogus me reflect: “Could I anytime applause God this much?” I activate myself adverse this life-changing canon of faith.
Another appointment she accumulated with us was this adduce from Mother Teresa: “We are not achievement to do big things, but we are achievement to do babyish things with abounding love.”
After the interview, I able that this angel was actually great. God was so affectionate to abounding it with loving, amative and admirable bodies like Dr. Biyo. I apprenticed to do one big thing: Put applause in all the things that I do.
I aswell abstract abounding about teamwork. I abstract how to allocation my annual and, at the above time, be a able listener. Karen Racelis
As the girls would say, acquirements is a two-way street. I aswell abstract from them during the process.
Dr. Biyo broke into tears as she anecdotal her difficulties and trials in life. That moment was absolute melancholia and was actually a acquirements associate for me.
Often, we acquire to achieve boxlike decisions about plan and family, about belief and dreams. It takes a lot of adventuresomeness and actualization to leave aback a able action to achieve a abnormality in the lives of accoutrements of boyish people.
2012年6月20日星期三
Spices for the people
In a aliment apple that can assume bent up with celebrity chefs, barbarous affable contests and a agitated attack to break cutting-edge, Penzey’s Spices stands aside.
You’ll feel that in the abundance they’ve afresh opened at Hyde Park Plaza in Oakley, their 70th.
Though it is absolutely abounding with spices familar and alien – with hard-to-find chiles, several kinds of cinnamon, herbs, extracts and back-scratch mixtures – it’s aswell what the abundance doesn’t accept that defines Penzey’s approach.
They don’t action affable classes. “We wish to accommodated humans area they are in their affable life,” said Mark Schuster, a retail administrator and abundance designer. “We bless what humans already apperceive how to do and just wish to advice them accomplish it aftertaste better.”
There are no big photos in the boutique of the alien locations the spices appear from. “We don’t wish to beat people. It can be a lot if you appear in,” said Aimee Bashor, the administrator of the Oakley store.
Aside from some pepper grinders, there are no added articles – no sauces, pastas, acid boards or adorned knives . The alone adornment added than the bottles and accoutrements of spices abiding on board shelves is a best kitchen in one corner, with an ancient refrigerator and chestnut molds on the wall. The aftereffect is a cantankerous amid grandma’s kitchen and a wonderland of alien flavors from all over the world, and Penzey’s offers both.
“People who appear in actuality are cooks at every level,” said Bashor. “During the day, we allocution to anybody – from basal to gourmet cooks. A lot of humans appear in because they’re just annoyed of affable craven the aforementioned old way; they wish something new.”
Some humans appear in just to allocution about aliment and affable and allotment ideas.
“Sometimes humans will be in actuality for an hour and a bisected and not buy anything. That’s OK,” said Bashor. They generally accompany in examples of what they’ve made. “One of my barter brought me in a block the added day,” she said.
Ruth Ann and Bill Penzey opened a baby aroma and coffee abundance in Milwaukee in the aboriginal ’50s. In 1987, their son Bill Jr. angry Penzey’s into a mail-order aroma business. He opened his aboriginal retail abundance in Milwaukee in 1994, the next one in 2005, and now there are 70. All are all family-owned, run by the aggregation from Milwaukee. Penzey’s aggregation ability includes a ample allowance of acceptable high Midwest values; a dosage of Wisconsin “nice.”
“I don’t anticipate Bill would apperception getting declared that way at all,” said Schuster. Bill Penzey generally emphasizes the accent of “kindness” and the charge to account cooks for accouterment humans they adulation with aliment they’ve prepared.
Interaction with barter and anniversary of traditions are important locations of Penzey’s way of accomplishing business. All the recipes on cards throughout the store, and in the accepted mail-order catalog, came from customers. They generally cover belief about area the compound came from and its claimed significance. Some of the recipes use Penzey’s blends, and others cover annihilation added alien than boilerplate or cinnamon. But for anyone absent to amplitude their comestible horizons, there are affluence of new things to try.
“It’s not that we don’t wish humans to try new things,” said Schuster. “We’re blessed to acquaint things humans don’t apperceive about.”
All of the articles are on the shelf in bottles you can accessible and that appears to that appears to smell afore you buy. “That absolutely makes a difference,” said Bashor. “It helps humans accept how they ability wish to use something in their cooking.”
So if you wish to acquaint the aberration amid Saigon and Ceylon biscuit to get an abstraction of what chervil ability be like or how ambrosial Aleppo pepper is, you can that appears to that appears to smell them to acquisition out.
Penzey’s is aswell accepted for its blends. Many are salt-free, absolute for humans on a low-sodium diet . They accept acceptable blends, such as accomplished herbs, zaatar, Chinese five-spice and garam masala, and their own. There’s a new steak condiment alleged Mitchell Street. Arizona Dreaming is a Penzey’s alloy of chili peppers and spices, and Tsardust Memories is a Russian-style mixture.
You’ll feel that in the abundance they’ve afresh opened at Hyde Park Plaza in Oakley, their 70th.
Though it is absolutely abounding with spices familar and alien – with hard-to-find chiles, several kinds of cinnamon, herbs, extracts and back-scratch mixtures – it’s aswell what the abundance doesn’t accept that defines Penzey’s approach.
They don’t action affable classes. “We wish to accommodated humans area they are in their affable life,” said Mark Schuster, a retail administrator and abundance designer. “We bless what humans already apperceive how to do and just wish to advice them accomplish it aftertaste better.”
There are no big photos in the boutique of the alien locations the spices appear from. “We don’t wish to beat people. It can be a lot if you appear in,” said Aimee Bashor, the administrator of the Oakley store.
Aside from some pepper grinders, there are no added articles – no sauces, pastas, acid boards or adorned knives . The alone adornment added than the bottles and accoutrements of spices abiding on board shelves is a best kitchen in one corner, with an ancient refrigerator and chestnut molds on the wall. The aftereffect is a cantankerous amid grandma’s kitchen and a wonderland of alien flavors from all over the world, and Penzey’s offers both.
“People who appear in actuality are cooks at every level,” said Bashor. “During the day, we allocution to anybody – from basal to gourmet cooks. A lot of humans appear in because they’re just annoyed of affable craven the aforementioned old way; they wish something new.”
Some humans appear in just to allocution about aliment and affable and allotment ideas.
“Sometimes humans will be in actuality for an hour and a bisected and not buy anything. That’s OK,” said Bashor. They generally accompany in examples of what they’ve made. “One of my barter brought me in a block the added day,” she said.
Ruth Ann and Bill Penzey opened a baby aroma and coffee abundance in Milwaukee in the aboriginal ’50s. In 1987, their son Bill Jr. angry Penzey’s into a mail-order aroma business. He opened his aboriginal retail abundance in Milwaukee in 1994, the next one in 2005, and now there are 70. All are all family-owned, run by the aggregation from Milwaukee. Penzey’s aggregation ability includes a ample allowance of acceptable high Midwest values; a dosage of Wisconsin “nice.”
“I don’t anticipate Bill would apperception getting declared that way at all,” said Schuster. Bill Penzey generally emphasizes the accent of “kindness” and the charge to account cooks for accouterment humans they adulation with aliment they’ve prepared.
Interaction with barter and anniversary of traditions are important locations of Penzey’s way of accomplishing business. All the recipes on cards throughout the store, and in the accepted mail-order catalog, came from customers. They generally cover belief about area the compound came from and its claimed significance. Some of the recipes use Penzey’s blends, and others cover annihilation added alien than boilerplate or cinnamon. But for anyone absent to amplitude their comestible horizons, there are affluence of new things to try.
“It’s not that we don’t wish humans to try new things,” said Schuster. “We’re blessed to acquaint things humans don’t apperceive about.”
All of the articles are on the shelf in bottles you can accessible and that appears to that appears to smell afore you buy. “That absolutely makes a difference,” said Bashor. “It helps humans accept how they ability wish to use something in their cooking.”
So if you wish to acquaint the aberration amid Saigon and Ceylon biscuit to get an abstraction of what chervil ability be like or how ambrosial Aleppo pepper is, you can that appears to that appears to smell them to acquisition out.
Penzey’s is aswell accepted for its blends. Many are salt-free, absolute for humans on a low-sodium diet . They accept acceptable blends, such as accomplished herbs, zaatar, Chinese five-spice and garam masala, and their own. There’s a new steak condiment alleged Mitchell Street. Arizona Dreaming is a Penzey’s alloy of chili peppers and spices, and Tsardust Memories is a Russian-style mixture.
2012年6月19日星期二
Tesla prepares for Model S launch
Many in the acceptable auto industry doubted that Tesla Motors could body an all-electric auto from blemish in Silicon Valley. But this anniversary the skeptics will attestant the tech industry’s a lot of confusing artefact barrage of the year.
Tesla is counting down the hours to Friday, if CEO Elon Musk will duke over the keys to a baby accumulation of barter who placed aboriginal anxiety for the Model S sedan. It’s a watershed moment for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, accomplishment in California and the beginning electric car industry, which has been disturbing to reside up to aggressive expectations.
“This is a tech product,” said Theo O’Neill, an analyst at Wunderlich Securities who has been bullish on Tesla because the aggregation is carrying the Model S advanced of schedule, something exceptional of in the electric car industry. “And it is bad account for the naysayers in Detroit who can’t acquisition their way out of a cardboard bag.”
Tesla is architecture the Model S at the above NUMMI bulb in Fremont, Calif., the website of a above Toyota-GM adventure that it bought in 2010 and transformed.
Invited for a attenuate appointment to the plant, the aboriginal affair a anchorman and columnist from this bi-weekly noticed were the all-inclusive parking lots. Empty if NUMMI shut down, they are now abounding with cars and accept committed spots for electric car charging.
Fresh orchids in a ample boutonniere accost visitors in the glassy lobby, area Tesla-branded T-shirts and jackets are for sale. Much of the alveolate ability has been corrective a aflame white, giving it a bright, apple-pie and affected feel. The appointment amplitude looks like a amusing media startup: an accessible attic plan abounding with advisers on computers, with no cubicles or clandestine offices. On the branch attic itself, workers zip about on red bicycles or in electric golf carts because it takes too continued to walk.
“People acclimated to anticipate we were a joke,” said Gilbert Passin, Tesla’s carnality admiral of manufacturing, as he stood on “the bridge,” a second-floor aisle overlooking the accumulation line. “But there’s no way you can appear into this branch and not apperceive we are absolutely serious. You cannot do this in your garage.”
The Model S begins as a massive cycle of aluminum that is cut into ample sheets. From there, the aluminum is “stamped” into three-dimensional pieces, including doors, fenders, panels and roofs, application massive, 40-ton molds accepted as “dies.” State-of-the-art robots from Kuka, a German company, augment the bedding into the hydraulic columnist line. Aluminum is far lighter than steel, acceptance Tesla to access the all-embracing ambit of the vehicle. The Model S seats 5 adults with two adolescent seats in the rear.
“Stamping is basically the anatomy of the vehicle, and 95 percent of it is fabricated appropriate here,” said Passin, a built-in of France who abutting Tesla afterwards getting accepted administrator of accumulation engineering for Toyota in North America. “It’s actual animating to be able to aftermath a car. We accept been alive actual harder to exhausted our centralized targets. We do not accept to rush, but we are alive acutely fast.”
Tesla is purchasing locations and raw abstracts from added than 100 U.S. suppliers, including from companies in California, Michigan and Tennessee.
After the car is framed, painted, and goes through final assembly, anniversary new Model S is subjected to a accurate alternation of superior tests. Vehicles yield what is about a battery with recycled baptize to analysis for sealing and leaks. There’s aswell a “squeak and rattle” analysis that mimics the motion of active on absolute roads. Because electric cars don’t accept tailpipe emissions, the analysis can be done central the factory, after abhorrence of fumes.
Tesla is counting down the hours to Friday, if CEO Elon Musk will duke over the keys to a baby accumulation of barter who placed aboriginal anxiety for the Model S sedan. It’s a watershed moment for the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company, accomplishment in California and the beginning electric car industry, which has been disturbing to reside up to aggressive expectations.
“This is a tech product,” said Theo O’Neill, an analyst at Wunderlich Securities who has been bullish on Tesla because the aggregation is carrying the Model S advanced of schedule, something exceptional of in the electric car industry. “And it is bad account for the naysayers in Detroit who can’t acquisition their way out of a cardboard bag.”
Tesla is architecture the Model S at the above NUMMI bulb in Fremont, Calif., the website of a above Toyota-GM adventure that it bought in 2010 and transformed.
Invited for a attenuate appointment to the plant, the aboriginal affair a anchorman and columnist from this bi-weekly noticed were the all-inclusive parking lots. Empty if NUMMI shut down, they are now abounding with cars and accept committed spots for electric car charging.
Fresh orchids in a ample boutonniere accost visitors in the glassy lobby, area Tesla-branded T-shirts and jackets are for sale. Much of the alveolate ability has been corrective a aflame white, giving it a bright, apple-pie and affected feel. The appointment amplitude looks like a amusing media startup: an accessible attic plan abounding with advisers on computers, with no cubicles or clandestine offices. On the branch attic itself, workers zip about on red bicycles or in electric golf carts because it takes too continued to walk.
“People acclimated to anticipate we were a joke,” said Gilbert Passin, Tesla’s carnality admiral of manufacturing, as he stood on “the bridge,” a second-floor aisle overlooking the accumulation line. “But there’s no way you can appear into this branch and not apperceive we are absolutely serious. You cannot do this in your garage.”
The Model S begins as a massive cycle of aluminum that is cut into ample sheets. From there, the aluminum is “stamped” into three-dimensional pieces, including doors, fenders, panels and roofs, application massive, 40-ton molds accepted as “dies.” State-of-the-art robots from Kuka, a German company, augment the bedding into the hydraulic columnist line. Aluminum is far lighter than steel, acceptance Tesla to access the all-embracing ambit of the vehicle. The Model S seats 5 adults with two adolescent seats in the rear.
“Stamping is basically the anatomy of the vehicle, and 95 percent of it is fabricated appropriate here,” said Passin, a built-in of France who abutting Tesla afterwards getting accepted administrator of accumulation engineering for Toyota in North America. “It’s actual animating to be able to aftermath a car. We accept been alive actual harder to exhausted our centralized targets. We do not accept to rush, but we are alive acutely fast.”
Tesla is purchasing locations and raw abstracts from added than 100 U.S. suppliers, including from companies in California, Michigan and Tennessee.
After the car is framed, painted, and goes through final assembly, anniversary new Model S is subjected to a accurate alternation of superior tests. Vehicles yield what is about a battery with recycled baptize to analysis for sealing and leaks. There’s aswell a “squeak and rattle” analysis that mimics the motion of active on absolute roads. Because electric cars don’t accept tailpipe emissions, the analysis can be done central the factory, after abhorrence of fumes.
2012年6月18日星期一
Business intelligence waar je het niet verwacht
Wanneer het gaat om het maken van wijn, is het cultiveren van klanten minstens even lastig als het cultiveren van druiven. Het succes van beide ondernemingen hangt af van veel factoren, waaronder de tools die je gebruikt voor de business en het verbouwen van de druiven.
Met deze gedachte in het achterhoofd, beheert wijnbouwer Matt Wood zijn klantenbestand. Hij maakt gebruik van de meest moderne beschikbare tools: business intelligence software. Hij gebruikt BI om inzichtelijk te maken wie zijn wijnen kopen en waarom klanten overstappen naar concurrerende merken, zodat hij zijn marketing hierop kan afstemmen. "Het gaat om het bestuderen van klantgedrag en op basis daarvan inzichten verwerven via de BI-tool. Daar liggen enorm grote kansen", legt hij uit.
De basisgedachte achter business intelligence is het converteren van ruwe data in informatie. Voor veel bedrijven betekent dit het gebruik van BI-tools om data in rapportages te vertalen en zo een goed beeld te krijgen van de bedrijfshistorie. Je krijgt bij wijze van spreken een achteruitkijkspiegel tot je beschikking.
Maar nu steeds meer organisaties met een volwassen BI-infrastructuur op de proppen komen en deze leren te gebruiken, worden ze in staat gesteld om hun BI vragen te laten beantwoorden die men eerder nooit had durven stellen. Het gaat richting de voorspellende analyse (predictive analysis), waar op basis van historische data een voorspelling voor de toekomst wordt gedaan, zodat relere strategien kunnen worden ontwikkeld.
"De mogelijkheid om dieper te duiken en patronen te ontdekken die eerder niet gezien werden is onvoorstelbaar krachtig", zegt analist David White van bureau Aberdeen Group. Dit type innovatie stelt organisaties in staat om sneller, effectiever en efficinter in te spelen op uitdagingen.
Wood spit grote hoeveelheden klantdata door via een systeem afkomstig van eWinery Solutions. Het systeem, gebaseerd op het WebFocus BI-platform van Information Builders, kan nagaan of klanten e-mail afkomstig van de wijngaard openen, of ze wijn kopen naar aanleiding van het lezen van een e-mail of gesprek met een telemarketeer, hoe vaak ze de wijngaard bezoeken voor een proefsessie of rondleiding en of ze meer houden van rode dan van witte wijn.
Wood zegt dat hij minder genteresseerd is geraakt in het aantal bezoekers van de website of hoe groot het percentage rode wijn liefhebbers is. Zulke zaken zijn weliswaar belangrijk, maar war het werkelijk om draait is inzichtelijk te krijgen wat bepaalde groepen klanten naar alle waarschijnlijkheid het eerst zullen doen.
Op dit moment kijkt hij naar patronen in klanten die opzeggen uit de wijnclub, zodat hij kan daarop kan anticiperen door marketingactiviteiten erop af te stemmen dat ze terugkeren.
"Ik was ervan overtuigd dat als ik het koopgedrag inzichtelijk zou krijgen en daarin patronen kon vaststellen, dat ik daardoor het gedrag van mensen kon voorspellen en proactieve marketingcampagnes lanceren", zegt Wood. "En als we proactief deze mensen zouden kunnen benaderen, zou ik tegen hen zeggen 'Kom naar onze lunch om exclusief deze nieuwste wijn te proeven voordat anderen dat kunnen doen'. Op basis daarvan kunnen we een patroon ontdekken wat deze mensen nog bereidwilliger maakt."
Met deze gedachte in het achterhoofd, beheert wijnbouwer Matt Wood zijn klantenbestand. Hij maakt gebruik van de meest moderne beschikbare tools: business intelligence software. Hij gebruikt BI om inzichtelijk te maken wie zijn wijnen kopen en waarom klanten overstappen naar concurrerende merken, zodat hij zijn marketing hierop kan afstemmen. "Het gaat om het bestuderen van klantgedrag en op basis daarvan inzichten verwerven via de BI-tool. Daar liggen enorm grote kansen", legt hij uit.
De basisgedachte achter business intelligence is het converteren van ruwe data in informatie. Voor veel bedrijven betekent dit het gebruik van BI-tools om data in rapportages te vertalen en zo een goed beeld te krijgen van de bedrijfshistorie. Je krijgt bij wijze van spreken een achteruitkijkspiegel tot je beschikking.
Maar nu steeds meer organisaties met een volwassen BI-infrastructuur op de proppen komen en deze leren te gebruiken, worden ze in staat gesteld om hun BI vragen te laten beantwoorden die men eerder nooit had durven stellen. Het gaat richting de voorspellende analyse (predictive analysis), waar op basis van historische data een voorspelling voor de toekomst wordt gedaan, zodat relere strategien kunnen worden ontwikkeld.
"De mogelijkheid om dieper te duiken en patronen te ontdekken die eerder niet gezien werden is onvoorstelbaar krachtig", zegt analist David White van bureau Aberdeen Group. Dit type innovatie stelt organisaties in staat om sneller, effectiever en efficinter in te spelen op uitdagingen.
Wood spit grote hoeveelheden klantdata door via een systeem afkomstig van eWinery Solutions. Het systeem, gebaseerd op het WebFocus BI-platform van Information Builders, kan nagaan of klanten e-mail afkomstig van de wijngaard openen, of ze wijn kopen naar aanleiding van het lezen van een e-mail of gesprek met een telemarketeer, hoe vaak ze de wijngaard bezoeken voor een proefsessie of rondleiding en of ze meer houden van rode dan van witte wijn.
Wood zegt dat hij minder genteresseerd is geraakt in het aantal bezoekers van de website of hoe groot het percentage rode wijn liefhebbers is. Zulke zaken zijn weliswaar belangrijk, maar war het werkelijk om draait is inzichtelijk te krijgen wat bepaalde groepen klanten naar alle waarschijnlijkheid het eerst zullen doen.
Op dit moment kijkt hij naar patronen in klanten die opzeggen uit de wijnclub, zodat hij kan daarop kan anticiperen door marketingactiviteiten erop af te stemmen dat ze terugkeren.
"Ik was ervan overtuigd dat als ik het koopgedrag inzichtelijk zou krijgen en daarin patronen kon vaststellen, dat ik daardoor het gedrag van mensen kon voorspellen en proactieve marketingcampagnes lanceren", zegt Wood. "En als we proactief deze mensen zouden kunnen benaderen, zou ik tegen hen zeggen 'Kom naar onze lunch om exclusief deze nieuwste wijn te proeven voordat anderen dat kunnen doen'. Op basis daarvan kunnen we een patroon ontdekken wat deze mensen nog bereidwilliger maakt."
2012年6月17日星期日
Paul Jenkins, Painter of Abstract Artwork
Paul Jenkins, a colorful Abstract Expressionist who came of age during the heyday of the New York School and for several decades carried on its highly physical tradition of manipulating paint and canvas, died on June 9 in Manhattan, where he lived and had continued to paint until recently. He was 88.
He died after a short illness, said his wife, Suzanne.
In the late 1940s, joining a wave of aspiring painters moving to New York, Mr. Jenkins used the G.I. Bill to study at the Art Students League and soon met Jackson Pollock and befriended Mark Rothko.
Early on he adopted a tactile, chance-driven method of painting that relied on almost every technique but rarely brushwork. Dribbling paint, Pollock-like, onto loose canvases, he allowed it to roll, pool and bleed, and he sometimes kneaded and hauled on the canvas — “as if it were a sail,” he said once. His favorite tool for many years was an elegant ivory knife, which he used to guide the flow of paint.
The billowy, undulating results could look like psychedelic landscapes or what Stuart Preston, reviewing his work in The New York Times in 1958, described as “Abstract Expressionist rococo.” Influenced by the theories of Jung and by the visionary imagery of Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau, Mr. Jenkins described himself as an “abstract phenomenist,” and from the 1960s on, all his paintings’ titles began with the word “Phenomena.”
“I have conversations with them,” he said of his paintings, “and they tell me what they want to be called.”
His work attracted collectors and museums in the United States, but he had a stronger following in Europe, where, with his flowing hair and beard — a friend said he looked like Charlton Heston’s Moses — he seemed to embody an old-fashioned archetype of the avant-garde artist. In a 2009 review of work from the 1960s and ’70s, Roberta Smith wrote in The Times that Mr. Jenkins’s paintings were “more a popular idea of abstract art than the real thing” and “too gorgeous for their own good.”
William Paul Jenkins was born — during a lightning storm, according to his official biography — in Kansas City, Mo., on July 12, 1923. As a boy, he met both Thomas Hart Benton and Frank Lloyd Wright. (Wright suggested that he should think about a career in agriculture rather than art.) He worked weekends at a ceramics factory, where watching the master mold-maker’s handling of shape and color, he said, had a profound effect on his ideas about painting.
By the 1970s and ’80s, his art career had provided him with a glamorous lifestyle, divided between France, where his paintings graced a Pierre Cardin boutique, and New York, where he worked in an airy loft near Union Square that had previously belonged to Willem de Kooning. The first lady of France, Danielle Mitterrand, once visited the studio, and the party he gave for her was attended by guests like Paloma Picasso, Robert Motherwell and Berenice Abbott.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Jenkins is survived by his daughter, Hilarie Jenkins.
In 1971, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Art organized a retrospective of Mr. Jenkins’s work. But he got much more exposure in 1978, when his paintings had a starring role in the Paul Mazursky movie “An Unmarried Woman,” in which Alan Bates plays a smoldering, heavily bearded Manhattan artist. The paintings supposedly done by the Bates character were actually his work.
Mr. Jenkins spent weeks teaching Mr. Bates how to approximate his methods of paint-pouring and canvas-wrestling, a way of making art he described as tempting fate.
“I try to paint like a crapshooter throwing dice, utilizing past experience and my knowledge of the odds,” he said in 1964. “It’s a big gamble, and that’s why I love it.”
He died after a short illness, said his wife, Suzanne.
In the late 1940s, joining a wave of aspiring painters moving to New York, Mr. Jenkins used the G.I. Bill to study at the Art Students League and soon met Jackson Pollock and befriended Mark Rothko.
Early on he adopted a tactile, chance-driven method of painting that relied on almost every technique but rarely brushwork. Dribbling paint, Pollock-like, onto loose canvases, he allowed it to roll, pool and bleed, and he sometimes kneaded and hauled on the canvas — “as if it were a sail,” he said once. His favorite tool for many years was an elegant ivory knife, which he used to guide the flow of paint.
The billowy, undulating results could look like psychedelic landscapes or what Stuart Preston, reviewing his work in The New York Times in 1958, described as “Abstract Expressionist rococo.” Influenced by the theories of Jung and by the visionary imagery of Odilon Redon and Gustave Moreau, Mr. Jenkins described himself as an “abstract phenomenist,” and from the 1960s on, all his paintings’ titles began with the word “Phenomena.”
“I have conversations with them,” he said of his paintings, “and they tell me what they want to be called.”
His work attracted collectors and museums in the United States, but he had a stronger following in Europe, where, with his flowing hair and beard — a friend said he looked like Charlton Heston’s Moses — he seemed to embody an old-fashioned archetype of the avant-garde artist. In a 2009 review of work from the 1960s and ’70s, Roberta Smith wrote in The Times that Mr. Jenkins’s paintings were “more a popular idea of abstract art than the real thing” and “too gorgeous for their own good.”
William Paul Jenkins was born — during a lightning storm, according to his official biography — in Kansas City, Mo., on July 12, 1923. As a boy, he met both Thomas Hart Benton and Frank Lloyd Wright. (Wright suggested that he should think about a career in agriculture rather than art.) He worked weekends at a ceramics factory, where watching the master mold-maker’s handling of shape and color, he said, had a profound effect on his ideas about painting.
By the 1970s and ’80s, his art career had provided him with a glamorous lifestyle, divided between France, where his paintings graced a Pierre Cardin boutique, and New York, where he worked in an airy loft near Union Square that had previously belonged to Willem de Kooning. The first lady of France, Danielle Mitterrand, once visited the studio, and the party he gave for her was attended by guests like Paloma Picasso, Robert Motherwell and Berenice Abbott.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Jenkins is survived by his daughter, Hilarie Jenkins.
In 1971, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Art organized a retrospective of Mr. Jenkins’s work. But he got much more exposure in 1978, when his paintings had a starring role in the Paul Mazursky movie “An Unmarried Woman,” in which Alan Bates plays a smoldering, heavily bearded Manhattan artist. The paintings supposedly done by the Bates character were actually his work.
Mr. Jenkins spent weeks teaching Mr. Bates how to approximate his methods of paint-pouring and canvas-wrestling, a way of making art he described as tempting fate.
“I try to paint like a crapshooter throwing dice, utilizing past experience and my knowledge of the odds,” he said in 1964. “It’s a big gamble, and that’s why I love it.”
2012年6月14日星期四
Engel results reflect investment
The Austrian group announced the results at a June 13-14 symposium in Linz and St. Valentin, at which it launched several new machines and technologies, including a new concept using in-situ polymerization to produce composite parts.
Asia has been a high-growth market for the company and it is aiming to increase sales in the region from 125 million euros in 2010-11 to 200 million euros in 2015. Engel’s investments have led to capacity increases at its plants in Shanghai and Pyungtaek, South Korea.
Other investments in Europe have included 2 million euros at its Hagen, Germany, facility to support rising orders for its robots. This year, the company will also open a technical center in Stuttgart, Germany, at which systems and technologies can be demonstrated to customers.
Opening the two-day symposium, at which Engel expected around 2,500 attendees, CEO Peter Neumann contrasted the group’s current high sales with the pessimistic atmosphere of three years ago. In the first three months (April-June) of this financial year, sales have continued to grow, he said.
However, Neumann expressed concern about the continuing economic impact in Europe caused by problems in the financial sector.
“Have we learnt anything from the crisis? I personally doubt that, at least in the financial system,” he said.
He was critical of the banking sector’s move away from its traditional role of financing trade and investment. Engel has used its own funds to support investments in production capacity and new technologies.
“Engel is a family business and has always been conservative in its financing,” he said.
The fourth generation is now represented by Stefan Engleder, great-grandson of founder Ludwig Engel, and his brother-in-law Christoph Steger. Engleder heads the Engel robotics plant in Dietach, Austria, and Steger became head of Engel’s packaging business unit at the beginning of 2011.
Speaking to European Plastics News, Peter Neumann said Engel’s continued investment has helped its sales success.
Investment in research and development has included formation of a tech center for development of lightweight composites based at the St. Valentin plant, where Engel makes its large-machine series.
Neumann said a team of 14 people from different departments are working together at the center. He said it is important for the process of innovation to bring these people together in one unified center, rather than having them working in their own departments.
The center will work on composite applications for the automotive sector, Neumann said.
Peter Egger, head of the lightweight-technology center, presented some of the composite production technologies Engel is developing. At the K 2010 show, the company demonstrated its use of pre-impregnated organosheet in the injection molding process. Engel is now developing this further with a prototype process that uses in-situ polymerization, dry carbon-fiber fabrics and injection molding.
Egger said Engel’s target is to develop “one shot, one part” production of composite parts.
The prototype process was shown in the symposium exhibition, making inserts for brake pedals on an e-Victory 310H/310V/120 combi injection molding machine. In the process, a fiber pre-mold is created, which is insert-placed into the mold. This is impregnated with caprolactam by a newly developed, servo-electrically driven, high-pressure, resin-transfer molding injection unit. In the reactive process the caprolactam is polymerized into nylon 6 in the heated mold.
Engel developed the in situ polymerization technology in cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology ICT in Pfinztal, Germany.
Engel also launched new machines at the symposium. The company showed the large-scale, electric e-duo machine for the first time, plus a new duo pico machine. It also launched a new all-electric model, the e-Mac, which has been designed as a compact range for precision molders.
Asia has been a high-growth market for the company and it is aiming to increase sales in the region from 125 million euros in 2010-11 to 200 million euros in 2015. Engel’s investments have led to capacity increases at its plants in Shanghai and Pyungtaek, South Korea.
Other investments in Europe have included 2 million euros at its Hagen, Germany, facility to support rising orders for its robots. This year, the company will also open a technical center in Stuttgart, Germany, at which systems and technologies can be demonstrated to customers.
Opening the two-day symposium, at which Engel expected around 2,500 attendees, CEO Peter Neumann contrasted the group’s current high sales with the pessimistic atmosphere of three years ago. In the first three months (April-June) of this financial year, sales have continued to grow, he said.
However, Neumann expressed concern about the continuing economic impact in Europe caused by problems in the financial sector.
“Have we learnt anything from the crisis? I personally doubt that, at least in the financial system,” he said.
He was critical of the banking sector’s move away from its traditional role of financing trade and investment. Engel has used its own funds to support investments in production capacity and new technologies.
“Engel is a family business and has always been conservative in its financing,” he said.
The fourth generation is now represented by Stefan Engleder, great-grandson of founder Ludwig Engel, and his brother-in-law Christoph Steger. Engleder heads the Engel robotics plant in Dietach, Austria, and Steger became head of Engel’s packaging business unit at the beginning of 2011.
Speaking to European Plastics News, Peter Neumann said Engel’s continued investment has helped its sales success.
Investment in research and development has included formation of a tech center for development of lightweight composites based at the St. Valentin plant, where Engel makes its large-machine series.
Neumann said a team of 14 people from different departments are working together at the center. He said it is important for the process of innovation to bring these people together in one unified center, rather than having them working in their own departments.
The center will work on composite applications for the automotive sector, Neumann said.
Peter Egger, head of the lightweight-technology center, presented some of the composite production technologies Engel is developing. At the K 2010 show, the company demonstrated its use of pre-impregnated organosheet in the injection molding process. Engel is now developing this further with a prototype process that uses in-situ polymerization, dry carbon-fiber fabrics and injection molding.
Egger said Engel’s target is to develop “one shot, one part” production of composite parts.
The prototype process was shown in the symposium exhibition, making inserts for brake pedals on an e-Victory 310H/310V/120 combi injection molding machine. In the process, a fiber pre-mold is created, which is insert-placed into the mold. This is impregnated with caprolactam by a newly developed, servo-electrically driven, high-pressure, resin-transfer molding injection unit. In the reactive process the caprolactam is polymerized into nylon 6 in the heated mold.
Engel developed the in situ polymerization technology in cooperation with the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology ICT in Pfinztal, Germany.
Engel also launched new machines at the symposium. The company showed the large-scale, electric e-duo machine for the first time, plus a new duo pico machine. It also launched a new all-electric model, the e-Mac, which has been designed as a compact range for precision molders.
2012年6月13日星期三
Holden Announces Volt Dealers In Australia
This week Holden announced a total of 49 dealers that will sell and service the Holden Volt “long range electric car” – a rebadged version of the Chevy Volt – when it becomes available later this year in Australia.
Australia has a land mass of 2,966,152 square miles, and estimated population of around 23 million, and these dealers that will undergo special training and install charging facilities on site are expected to service the whole country.
While saying the car will not be restricted to city dwellers, Holden dealers will otherwise be clustered near denser portions of the population, including 18 in Victoria, 11 in NSW, nine in Queensland, seven in Western Australia and four in South Australia.
Each dealer has committed to achieve environmental accreditation and invest in new tooling and infrastructure to support Volt servicing requirements, said Holden Executive Director – Sales, Marketing and Aftersales, John Elsworth.
“Many Holden dealers already have a strong environmental focus but Volt dealers will also be required to achieve at least a level 2 Green Stamp Plus Accreditation through the VACC Green Stamp program,” said Elsworth. “Accreditation assures customers that the dealer takes its environmental responsibility seriously.”
Elsworth also confirmed the first orders had been placed by dealers who reported strong interest in the Holden Volt.
“We asked dealers to place their first Volt orders last month and while it’s too early to confirm numbers, we are receiving anecdotal feedback that there’s strong interest,” he said. “We would urge all customers to contact their dealer in the first instance if they want to secure one of the first Volts when they arrive in Australia.”
Australian customers can find their nearest Volt dealer via the this page on Holden's Web site.
Pricing, specifications and launch timings will be announced before the end of July, Holden says.
For those inclined to follow social media, Holden invites you to "join the conversation on Volt" at the Volt section of the Holden HQ blog or to register for more Volt information here.
Australia has a land mass of 2,966,152 square miles, and estimated population of around 23 million, and these dealers that will undergo special training and install charging facilities on site are expected to service the whole country.
While saying the car will not be restricted to city dwellers, Holden dealers will otherwise be clustered near denser portions of the population, including 18 in Victoria, 11 in NSW, nine in Queensland, seven in Western Australia and four in South Australia.
Each dealer has committed to achieve environmental accreditation and invest in new tooling and infrastructure to support Volt servicing requirements, said Holden Executive Director – Sales, Marketing and Aftersales, John Elsworth.
“Many Holden dealers already have a strong environmental focus but Volt dealers will also be required to achieve at least a level 2 Green Stamp Plus Accreditation through the VACC Green Stamp program,” said Elsworth. “Accreditation assures customers that the dealer takes its environmental responsibility seriously.”
Elsworth also confirmed the first orders had been placed by dealers who reported strong interest in the Holden Volt.
“We asked dealers to place their first Volt orders last month and while it’s too early to confirm numbers, we are receiving anecdotal feedback that there’s strong interest,” he said. “We would urge all customers to contact their dealer in the first instance if they want to secure one of the first Volts when they arrive in Australia.”
Australian customers can find their nearest Volt dealer via the this page on Holden's Web site.
Pricing, specifications and launch timings will be announced before the end of July, Holden says.
For those inclined to follow social media, Holden invites you to "join the conversation on Volt" at the Volt section of the Holden HQ blog or to register for more Volt information here.
2012年6月12日星期二
Starbucks turns to Ohio, not China
Not that long ago, this little Ohio River town could call itself the pottery capital of the nation. Some four dozen pottery factories here "set America's table," as the locals liked to boast, churning out everything from fine china to chamber pots and employing a large majority of the work force.
But no longer. Global competition and economic collapse shattered the industry like a poorly executed tablecloth trick and turned East Liverpool into a desperate corner of the country. Median income is roughly one-third lower than the state average, and more than 10 percent of working-age residents are unemployed.
Just two pottery makers remain, and one, the American Mug and Stein Company, was on the verge of closing last fall. Then Ulrich Honighausen called. Honighausen, the owner of a tableware company, Hausenware, in Sonoma County, Calif., which supplies retailers like Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn and Fred Meyer with ceramics and glassware from producers all over the world, had a plan to revitalize American Mug and create jobs in an industry that had all but died. What if American Mug were to make mugs for Starbucks?
"I almost didn't take his call because I figured it was a crank call or something," said Clyde M. McClellan, owner of American Mug.
But on Tuesday, the company's mugs will go on sale in Starbucks stores across the country as part of a line of new merchandise made in America and branded Indivisible.
American Mug's production has kept four people employed and created eight more jobs here, and money from the sale of the mugs and other Indivisible merchandise will go to support Starbucks's Create Jobs for USA Fund, which helps small businesses. "You have to start somewhere," Honighausen said.
The unlikely partnership between Starbucks, with its 200,000 employees, and tiny American Mug grows out of the debate over outsourcing by American companies and what responsibility, if any, they bear for addressing the decline of the country's job market. A few companies have taken some small steps to bring lost manufacturing jobs back to American soil, driven sometimes by declining labor costs in the U.S., other times by dissatisfaction with the quality of goods made abroad.
General Electric, for example, has created almost 800 jobs by building plants in Schenectady, N.Y., and Louisville, Ky., to make sophisticated batteries, some of which were previously made in China. NCR is making automatic teller machines in Georgia that had also been made overseas.
Last month, Starbucks announced it would build a new factory in Augusta, Ga., that would employ 140 people and make the company's Via instant coffee and the ingredients for its popular Frappuccino drinks. About half of Starbucks's new employment overall will come in the U.S., the rest internationally.
"We are on the hunt for other domestic opportunities for products we sell and other things we do," said Howard D. Schultz, chief executive of Starbucks. "There has to be a sense of urgency about action, and since we're not likely to find it in Washington between now and the election, it's time for companies and businesses to step up and find a balance between profitability and responsibility."
The effort is not all altruistic. Chinese labor has become more expensive, and Starbucks and other companies are looking at their supply chains more holistically. American Mug can deliver to Starbucks in four days, while Chinese suppliers may take three months.
A Chinese supplier is also likely to require an order in the hundreds of thousands, increasing the risk that Starbucks will get stuck with inventory. And then there is the difference in shipping costs. "No doubt the cost of doing what we're doing in East Liverpool at least in the initial stage will be more expensive for Starbucks, but the investment we're making in this is about the conscience of our company and recognition that success has to be shared," Schultz said.
So far, though, evidence that companies are bringing jobs back to America is spotty at best. "I'm not sure we're seeing a sea change," said Gary P. Pisano, a professor at Harvard Business School. "What we need to see is manufacturing that creates new capabilities here that we didn't have and can build on, and I don't think we're seeing that yet."
The business school has thrown its enormous prestige and resources behind what it calls "reinventing America," an effort in part to persuade American businesses, many of which are led by its graduates, to take a hard look at the impact their outsourcing has had on the country's competitiveness.
"One of our concerns is that as we lose certain capabilities in manufacturing, we are also losing highly innovative processes," Pisano said. "If a company does its manufacturing in China, its suppliers are going to locate in China and then a lot of the innovation that grows out of those businesses and creates new jobs is going to happen there and not here."
But no longer. Global competition and economic collapse shattered the industry like a poorly executed tablecloth trick and turned East Liverpool into a desperate corner of the country. Median income is roughly one-third lower than the state average, and more than 10 percent of working-age residents are unemployed.
Just two pottery makers remain, and one, the American Mug and Stein Company, was on the verge of closing last fall. Then Ulrich Honighausen called. Honighausen, the owner of a tableware company, Hausenware, in Sonoma County, Calif., which supplies retailers like Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn and Fred Meyer with ceramics and glassware from producers all over the world, had a plan to revitalize American Mug and create jobs in an industry that had all but died. What if American Mug were to make mugs for Starbucks?
"I almost didn't take his call because I figured it was a crank call or something," said Clyde M. McClellan, owner of American Mug.
But on Tuesday, the company's mugs will go on sale in Starbucks stores across the country as part of a line of new merchandise made in America and branded Indivisible.
American Mug's production has kept four people employed and created eight more jobs here, and money from the sale of the mugs and other Indivisible merchandise will go to support Starbucks's Create Jobs for USA Fund, which helps small businesses. "You have to start somewhere," Honighausen said.
The unlikely partnership between Starbucks, with its 200,000 employees, and tiny American Mug grows out of the debate over outsourcing by American companies and what responsibility, if any, they bear for addressing the decline of the country's job market. A few companies have taken some small steps to bring lost manufacturing jobs back to American soil, driven sometimes by declining labor costs in the U.S., other times by dissatisfaction with the quality of goods made abroad.
General Electric, for example, has created almost 800 jobs by building plants in Schenectady, N.Y., and Louisville, Ky., to make sophisticated batteries, some of which were previously made in China. NCR is making automatic teller machines in Georgia that had also been made overseas.
Last month, Starbucks announced it would build a new factory in Augusta, Ga., that would employ 140 people and make the company's Via instant coffee and the ingredients for its popular Frappuccino drinks. About half of Starbucks's new employment overall will come in the U.S., the rest internationally.
"We are on the hunt for other domestic opportunities for products we sell and other things we do," said Howard D. Schultz, chief executive of Starbucks. "There has to be a sense of urgency about action, and since we're not likely to find it in Washington between now and the election, it's time for companies and businesses to step up and find a balance between profitability and responsibility."
The effort is not all altruistic. Chinese labor has become more expensive, and Starbucks and other companies are looking at their supply chains more holistically. American Mug can deliver to Starbucks in four days, while Chinese suppliers may take three months.
A Chinese supplier is also likely to require an order in the hundreds of thousands, increasing the risk that Starbucks will get stuck with inventory. And then there is the difference in shipping costs. "No doubt the cost of doing what we're doing in East Liverpool at least in the initial stage will be more expensive for Starbucks, but the investment we're making in this is about the conscience of our company and recognition that success has to be shared," Schultz said.
So far, though, evidence that companies are bringing jobs back to America is spotty at best. "I'm not sure we're seeing a sea change," said Gary P. Pisano, a professor at Harvard Business School. "What we need to see is manufacturing that creates new capabilities here that we didn't have and can build on, and I don't think we're seeing that yet."
The business school has thrown its enormous prestige and resources behind what it calls "reinventing America," an effort in part to persuade American businesses, many of which are led by its graduates, to take a hard look at the impact their outsourcing has had on the country's competitiveness.
"One of our concerns is that as we lose certain capabilities in manufacturing, we are also losing highly innovative processes," Pisano said. "If a company does its manufacturing in China, its suppliers are going to locate in China and then a lot of the innovation that grows out of those businesses and creates new jobs is going to happen there and not here."
2012年6月11日星期一
Medicaid Fraud Busters Learn From Experience
Texas had an unusually high Medicaid orthodontics bill in 2010. At $185 million, the state was reportedly spending more than the other 49 states combined. Claims data showed that it had led the nation for three consecutive years in total dollars spent to help children with crooked teeth. Or at least that’s what state and federal regulators thought.
As it turns out, Texas did not have a higher percentage of children with orthodontic needs. Nor was the Medicaid program doing a better than average job of providing dental care for the poor. Instead, a handful of orthodontists were bilking Medicaid by putting braces on thousands of children who did not require them. They were also tweaking the braces more often than recommended and keeping them on much longer than was normal.
In fact, a small number of fraudulent orthodontic practices in the Dallas area had been operating in plain sight for years. Road signs advertised “free braces,” and dental workers solicited parents in pizza parlors and parking lots outside of social service agencies. The fraudsters’ offices were so crowded that parents had to wait outside.
Overall, the gambits of these few orthodontic practices proved wildly fruitful. One firm, All Smiles Dental Center, racked up as much in Medicaid payments in one year as the entire state of Illinois spent on orthodontics for low-income children over the same period.
A Dallas-Fort Worth television station, WFAA, uncovered the massive scam last year, although federal and state agencies had already begun investigating the cases, according to Stephanie Goodman, spokeswoman for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Now the state is attempting to recover a portion of the lost millions and the Medicaid agency has changed some of the policies that made the fraudulent practices possible in the first place.
Crooked orthodontists are not the first health providers to prey on the state’s $27 billion Medicaid program, nor will they be the last. The total amount of money lost to fraudulent orthodontics in Texas over the last three years, though estimated in the hundreds of millions, is only a portion of the money Texas Medicaid loses to waste, fraud and abuse each year, despite increasingly sophisticated efforts to prevent it.
And Texas is far from the only state plagued by unscrupulous health-care providers. Nationwide, the federal government estimates that it lost $22 billion of its share of Medicaid funding last year to what it calls “improper payments,” according to its payment accuracy survey. This suggests that the loss to state treasuries was also in the tens of billions.
How do flagrant violations of Medicaid procedure go unnoticed by federal and state regulators for so long? The answers are not simple.
Medicaid is a huge, administratively complex federal-state health-care program that covers 60 million low-income people and costs more than $400 billion a year. And it’s been growing faster than any other item on states’ budgets. No two state Medicaid programs are alike, making a single solution to the problem of waste, fraud and abuse impossible.
While only a fraction of the health-care providers who participate in Medicaid knowingly break or bend the rules for financial gain, the result is a substantial fiscal drain on the federal-state program. As fraudsters’ schemes grow bigger and more elaborate, state Medicaid agencies are forced to create equally elaborate schemes to thwart them.
But the more paperwork and audits they require from doctors, dentists, pharmacists and other health-care providers who serve the needy, the more Medicaid officials worry that they will have trouble attracting enough providers willing to accept Medicaid’s low fees.
As it turns out, Texas did not have a higher percentage of children with orthodontic needs. Nor was the Medicaid program doing a better than average job of providing dental care for the poor. Instead, a handful of orthodontists were bilking Medicaid by putting braces on thousands of children who did not require them. They were also tweaking the braces more often than recommended and keeping them on much longer than was normal.
In fact, a small number of fraudulent orthodontic practices in the Dallas area had been operating in plain sight for years. Road signs advertised “free braces,” and dental workers solicited parents in pizza parlors and parking lots outside of social service agencies. The fraudsters’ offices were so crowded that parents had to wait outside.
Overall, the gambits of these few orthodontic practices proved wildly fruitful. One firm, All Smiles Dental Center, racked up as much in Medicaid payments in one year as the entire state of Illinois spent on orthodontics for low-income children over the same period.
A Dallas-Fort Worth television station, WFAA, uncovered the massive scam last year, although federal and state agencies had already begun investigating the cases, according to Stephanie Goodman, spokeswoman for the Texas Health and Human Services Commission. Now the state is attempting to recover a portion of the lost millions and the Medicaid agency has changed some of the policies that made the fraudulent practices possible in the first place.
Crooked orthodontists are not the first health providers to prey on the state’s $27 billion Medicaid program, nor will they be the last. The total amount of money lost to fraudulent orthodontics in Texas over the last three years, though estimated in the hundreds of millions, is only a portion of the money Texas Medicaid loses to waste, fraud and abuse each year, despite increasingly sophisticated efforts to prevent it.
And Texas is far from the only state plagued by unscrupulous health-care providers. Nationwide, the federal government estimates that it lost $22 billion of its share of Medicaid funding last year to what it calls “improper payments,” according to its payment accuracy survey. This suggests that the loss to state treasuries was also in the tens of billions.
How do flagrant violations of Medicaid procedure go unnoticed by federal and state regulators for so long? The answers are not simple.
Medicaid is a huge, administratively complex federal-state health-care program that covers 60 million low-income people and costs more than $400 billion a year. And it’s been growing faster than any other item on states’ budgets. No two state Medicaid programs are alike, making a single solution to the problem of waste, fraud and abuse impossible.
While only a fraction of the health-care providers who participate in Medicaid knowingly break or bend the rules for financial gain, the result is a substantial fiscal drain on the federal-state program. As fraudsters’ schemes grow bigger and more elaborate, state Medicaid agencies are forced to create equally elaborate schemes to thwart them.
But the more paperwork and audits they require from doctors, dentists, pharmacists and other health-care providers who serve the needy, the more Medicaid officials worry that they will have trouble attracting enough providers willing to accept Medicaid’s low fees.
2012年6月10日星期日
How desparate or ignorant is Galesburg?
There is no question that the viability of Galesburg as a city is at stake. This community faces numerous chal-lenges. Some are the result of economic changes beyond our control, but most can be traced to bad or ques-tionable deci-sions made by our leadership.
Permitting Aluminum Castings, or any potential Galesburg employer, to do whatever they wish solely based upon the imme-diate prospect of main-taining or creating a few local jobs and without consid-er-ation of the long-term impli-ca-tions of those deci-sions is a sign of desper-ation and igno-rance — not an example of leadership.
Over the past two decades or more Galesburg has hemor-rhaged both jobs and popu-lation — a trend that is critical to reverse if the community is to survive. However, a major component of those bad deci-sions that have contributed to the community’s present dilemma has been repeated over and over again, our lead-ership regu-larly make hasty and reactive deci-sions based solely on perceived short-term effects with little or no thought to the longer term impli-ca-tions of those decisions.
Aluminum Castings’ manu-fac-turing plant sits on the corner of South Kellogg and South Streets at the southern edge of downtown Galesburg. The plant is currently zoned M-1 or light manu-fac-turing but the companies manu-fac-turing process is not a legal use in this zoning clas-si-fi-cation. The company produces aluminum cast mate-rials by melting the metal into a liquid state and pouring it into molds made of sand. As the liquid cools and hardens the molds are removed. This is clas-sified as heavy manu-fac-turing and is normally permitted only in areas zoned for heavy manu-fac-turing or M-2.
There is little question that such a manu-fac-turing oper-ation on the edge of downtown and adjacent to Knox College is inap-pro-pri-ately located. This is why zoning exists after all. But due to the oper-ation being present since 1964 it has been grandfathered-in as a legal non-conforming use. Now that the company wants to expand production into new space recently constructed puta-tively to serve as ware-house space the zoning once again becomes an issue. The grand-fa-thering does not auto-mat-i-cally extend to expansion of the business and that is why the company initially sought to have the area rezoned to M-2 or heavy industrial.
Both the city admin-is-tration and the Planing and Zoning Commission recog-nized how inap-pro-priate such rezoning would be in this location. In fact at last Monday’s Galesburg City Council meeting when this issue was being discussed mayor Sal Garza acknowl-edged that city offi-cials attempted to encourage Aluminum Castings to relocate their facil-ities to appro-pri-ately zoned available loca-tions else-where in Galesburg before the company constructed the so-called ware-house space but company offi-cials refused. In hind-sight it now seems probable that iden-ti-fying the new building as “ware-house space” was but a conve-nient ruse to disguise the real intent until after the investment was made.
Wishing to accom-modate Aluminum Castings without re-zoning the area to M-2 the city has offered instead to modify the M-1 zoning clas-si-fi-cation to permit casting oper-a-tions such as aluminum casting to be a conditional-use under the M-1 zoning clas-si-fi-cation. This would become an extreme example of spot zoning to permit an oper-ation that has no business existing on the edge of downtown Galesburg to expand and create a few more jobs. This illus-trates the desper-ation of city offi-cials to job oppor-tu-nities in Galesburg at any cost.
Also at last Monday nights’ city council meeting alderman Peter Schwartzman had the temerity to question this zoning change during first reading of the ordi-nance. While neither the mayor nor anyone else among city offi-cials or council members acknowl-edged it Schwartzman is uniquely qual-ified to raise such ques-tions. Schwartzman’s concerns extend beyond the mere appro-pri-ateness of such a manu-fac-turing oper-ation being located on the edge of downtown to issues of whether or not Aluminum Castings current and antic-i-pated future oper-a-tions may pose envi-ron-mental air quality issues.
Permitting Aluminum Castings, or any potential Galesburg employer, to do whatever they wish solely based upon the imme-diate prospect of main-taining or creating a few local jobs and without consid-er-ation of the long-term impli-ca-tions of those deci-sions is a sign of desper-ation and igno-rance — not an example of leadership.
Over the past two decades or more Galesburg has hemor-rhaged both jobs and popu-lation — a trend that is critical to reverse if the community is to survive. However, a major component of those bad deci-sions that have contributed to the community’s present dilemma has been repeated over and over again, our lead-ership regu-larly make hasty and reactive deci-sions based solely on perceived short-term effects with little or no thought to the longer term impli-ca-tions of those decisions.
Aluminum Castings’ manu-fac-turing plant sits on the corner of South Kellogg and South Streets at the southern edge of downtown Galesburg. The plant is currently zoned M-1 or light manu-fac-turing but the companies manu-fac-turing process is not a legal use in this zoning clas-si-fi-cation. The company produces aluminum cast mate-rials by melting the metal into a liquid state and pouring it into molds made of sand. As the liquid cools and hardens the molds are removed. This is clas-sified as heavy manu-fac-turing and is normally permitted only in areas zoned for heavy manu-fac-turing or M-2.
There is little question that such a manu-fac-turing oper-ation on the edge of downtown and adjacent to Knox College is inap-pro-pri-ately located. This is why zoning exists after all. But due to the oper-ation being present since 1964 it has been grandfathered-in as a legal non-conforming use. Now that the company wants to expand production into new space recently constructed puta-tively to serve as ware-house space the zoning once again becomes an issue. The grand-fa-thering does not auto-mat-i-cally extend to expansion of the business and that is why the company initially sought to have the area rezoned to M-2 or heavy industrial.
Both the city admin-is-tration and the Planing and Zoning Commission recog-nized how inap-pro-priate such rezoning would be in this location. In fact at last Monday’s Galesburg City Council meeting when this issue was being discussed mayor Sal Garza acknowl-edged that city offi-cials attempted to encourage Aluminum Castings to relocate their facil-ities to appro-pri-ately zoned available loca-tions else-where in Galesburg before the company constructed the so-called ware-house space but company offi-cials refused. In hind-sight it now seems probable that iden-ti-fying the new building as “ware-house space” was but a conve-nient ruse to disguise the real intent until after the investment was made.
Wishing to accom-modate Aluminum Castings without re-zoning the area to M-2 the city has offered instead to modify the M-1 zoning clas-si-fi-cation to permit casting oper-a-tions such as aluminum casting to be a conditional-use under the M-1 zoning clas-si-fi-cation. This would become an extreme example of spot zoning to permit an oper-ation that has no business existing on the edge of downtown Galesburg to expand and create a few more jobs. This illus-trates the desper-ation of city offi-cials to job oppor-tu-nities in Galesburg at any cost.
Also at last Monday nights’ city council meeting alderman Peter Schwartzman had the temerity to question this zoning change during first reading of the ordi-nance. While neither the mayor nor anyone else among city offi-cials or council members acknowl-edged it Schwartzman is uniquely qual-ified to raise such ques-tions. Schwartzman’s concerns extend beyond the mere appro-pri-ateness of such a manu-fac-turing oper-ation being located on the edge of downtown to issues of whether or not Aluminum Castings current and antic-i-pated future oper-a-tions may pose envi-ron-mental air quality issues.
2012年6月7日星期四
Drydocks World Nanindah launches Hallin Marine compact semi-submersible
The Drydocks World Nanindah shipyard in Batam, Indonesia, launched Singapore-based Hallin Marine's Compact Semi-Submersible, CSS Derwent. on June 5. Expected delivery is at the end of 2012.
The CSS concept has been developed by STX Marine, in partnership with Hallin Marine; Minnow Marine Projects Limited and M3 Marine, over a five year period to capture the capabilities and low-motion behavior of a semi-submersible vessel in the smallest form feasible, giving an industry-leading design in terms of operability.
The CSS Derwent is a twin hulled vessel of a semi-SWATH configuration, and features diesel electric propulsion with an azimuthing thruster at the ends of each hull. The twin hull platform provides a large stable work deck area with a long laydown area and low motions.
"CSS Derwent is a further example of Hallin's commitment to provide innovative solutions to the offshore subsea services sector," comments Hallin Marine's Founder and Group CEO John Giddens. "With accommodations for up to 152 personnel, she is a multi-service vessel built for complex subsea operations and work scopes that cross a wide spectrum of duties including construction support, IRM and light/medium well intervention."
"CSS Derwent meets the challenges of safe deck handling with a 160 metric t active-heave-compensated guided Module Handling System and a 150 t crane capable of working at water depths of 3,000 m, supported by dedicated 120 t pallet and skidding system." said Mr. Giddens. "She is fully prepared for subsea construction operations such as the installation of subsea trees, manifolds, flowlines, umbilicals and subsea structures as well as providing support to existing fields with inspection maintenance and repair services."
Responding to the huge challenges of deepwater operations, the innovative CSS design delivers exceptionally stable sea-keeping characteristics. A very large zone 1 rated deck (1,300 square metres) and long lay down area ensure good project load carrying capacity and meet the requirements of potential hydrocarbon management.
Classed by ABS as a DP Class 3 Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit (MODU), the CSS Derwent incorporates technology from industry-leading providers such as MacGregor (lifting systems), Rolls-Royce (engines and thrusters), Kongsberg (dynamic positioning)and ABB (power management), maximizing safety in operations and minimising cost through fuel-efficient diesel electric propulsion.
CSS Derwent carries two dedicated Quantum XP 225 hp deepwater construction class ROVs cabable of working at 3,000 m water depth. Designed to undertake the most demanding and power intensive subsea tasks in very deep water, the ROVs are housed below deck together co-located with built-in control rooms and workshops. They can be deployed through a dedicated centerline moonpool or from a starboard side launch position. The ROVs feature the latest technical advancements, including dynamic positioning (ROVDP), advanced diagnostics and the ability to plug and play standard instrumentation and tooling.
The CSS concept has been developed by STX Marine, in partnership with Hallin Marine; Minnow Marine Projects Limited and M3 Marine, over a five year period to capture the capabilities and low-motion behavior of a semi-submersible vessel in the smallest form feasible, giving an industry-leading design in terms of operability.
The CSS Derwent is a twin hulled vessel of a semi-SWATH configuration, and features diesel electric propulsion with an azimuthing thruster at the ends of each hull. The twin hull platform provides a large stable work deck area with a long laydown area and low motions.
"CSS Derwent is a further example of Hallin's commitment to provide innovative solutions to the offshore subsea services sector," comments Hallin Marine's Founder and Group CEO John Giddens. "With accommodations for up to 152 personnel, she is a multi-service vessel built for complex subsea operations and work scopes that cross a wide spectrum of duties including construction support, IRM and light/medium well intervention."
"CSS Derwent meets the challenges of safe deck handling with a 160 metric t active-heave-compensated guided Module Handling System and a 150 t crane capable of working at water depths of 3,000 m, supported by dedicated 120 t pallet and skidding system." said Mr. Giddens. "She is fully prepared for subsea construction operations such as the installation of subsea trees, manifolds, flowlines, umbilicals and subsea structures as well as providing support to existing fields with inspection maintenance and repair services."
Responding to the huge challenges of deepwater operations, the innovative CSS design delivers exceptionally stable sea-keeping characteristics. A very large zone 1 rated deck (1,300 square metres) and long lay down area ensure good project load carrying capacity and meet the requirements of potential hydrocarbon management.
Classed by ABS as a DP Class 3 Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit (MODU), the CSS Derwent incorporates technology from industry-leading providers such as MacGregor (lifting systems), Rolls-Royce (engines and thrusters), Kongsberg (dynamic positioning)and ABB (power management), maximizing safety in operations and minimising cost through fuel-efficient diesel electric propulsion.
CSS Derwent carries two dedicated Quantum XP 225 hp deepwater construction class ROVs cabable of working at 3,000 m water depth. Designed to undertake the most demanding and power intensive subsea tasks in very deep water, the ROVs are housed below deck together co-located with built-in control rooms and workshops. They can be deployed through a dedicated centerline moonpool or from a starboard side launch position. The ROVs feature the latest technical advancements, including dynamic positioning (ROVDP), advanced diagnostics and the ability to plug and play standard instrumentation and tooling.
2012年6月6日星期三
Advent Tool & Mould
Germany’s Rochling Group is expanding its base in North America with the acquisition of moulder and mould maker Advent Tool & Mould.
Advent will become part of Rochling Engineering Plastics of Germany, which sells finished and semi-finished products in sheet, rod and profiles as well as machined plastic parts. The addition of injection moulder Advent will increase Rochling’s offerings for the medical industry, the company said in a 1 June news release.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“This acquisition allows us to significantly expand the position of Rochling as a provider of sophisticated plastic products for the life science industry,” said COO Ludger Bartels. “In addition, we expect the acquisition to translate into synergies with other Rochling subsidiaries, which cater to the life science industry.”
Rochling Engineering Plastics already has US sites, in Texas, California, Ohio and Wisconsin. A sister company, Rochling Automotive Plastics, has also been expanding in the US.
Advent has 250 employees and $35m (€28m) in annual sales. Founder Ken Desrosiers will remain with the company as general manager while Lewis Carter, president of Rochling Engineering Plastics North America will become president of Advent Tool & Mould.
Advent invested $2.2m (€1.8m) in a second clean room for moulding in 2011 and has both insert and two-shot moulding. It began as a mould maker, and its capabilities in tooling will be “a particular competitive advantage” for Rochling, giving it an ability to find new solutions for production, Rochling said in the release.
Tooling expertise — along with the need for increased production capacity in a resurging production market — has been a driver in a new interest in acquisitions of mould makers, said Jeff Mengel, a partner with consulting group Plante & Moran, with offices in Chicago.
“We’re seeing more processors who want to make [tooling] a strategic component and a strategic asset and doing the [research and development] side of things,” he said.
Advent will become part of Rochling Engineering Plastics of Germany, which sells finished and semi-finished products in sheet, rod and profiles as well as machined plastic parts. The addition of injection moulder Advent will increase Rochling’s offerings for the medical industry, the company said in a 1 June news release.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“This acquisition allows us to significantly expand the position of Rochling as a provider of sophisticated plastic products for the life science industry,” said COO Ludger Bartels. “In addition, we expect the acquisition to translate into synergies with other Rochling subsidiaries, which cater to the life science industry.”
Rochling Engineering Plastics already has US sites, in Texas, California, Ohio and Wisconsin. A sister company, Rochling Automotive Plastics, has also been expanding in the US.
Advent has 250 employees and $35m (€28m) in annual sales. Founder Ken Desrosiers will remain with the company as general manager while Lewis Carter, president of Rochling Engineering Plastics North America will become president of Advent Tool & Mould.
Advent invested $2.2m (€1.8m) in a second clean room for moulding in 2011 and has both insert and two-shot moulding. It began as a mould maker, and its capabilities in tooling will be “a particular competitive advantage” for Rochling, giving it an ability to find new solutions for production, Rochling said in the release.
Tooling expertise — along with the need for increased production capacity in a resurging production market — has been a driver in a new interest in acquisitions of mould makers, said Jeff Mengel, a partner with consulting group Plante & Moran, with offices in Chicago.
“We’re seeing more processors who want to make [tooling] a strategic component and a strategic asset and doing the [research and development] side of things,” he said.
2012年6月5日星期二
Moovers taking Lego talents to Germany
Back in February, after the team he coaches had won the state championship, Rhett Starr had them focusing on the national tournament.
His players, the Moovers, had something more on their mind, as well: An international competition after that in Europe. Starr told the kids plainly:
Don’t even think about it. The team does not have the money.
Starr was totally wrong. This week, his kids are at that international competition.
“None of us could afford to go,” Starr said Sunday. “Once we got the big grant, a lot of these problems went away.”
The Moovers are an all-girl, all-sixth-grade team from Woodlawn Middle School in the First Lego League, which promotes science and engineering by showing kids how those two fields can be fun. The fun comes by playing with Legos — the teams must build motorized robots out of the plastic bricks and program them to drive around a game board, completing a set number of tasks in the shortest time span possible.
Later this week, the crew will time their robot against 63 counterparts from Brazil, Israel, Canada, South Africa, Guatemala and other nations at a global-level competition in Mannheim, Germany.
The Moovers are finishing their third season of competition; in January, they won the FLL state tournament in Arlington Heights, qualifying them for a trip to Winter Haven, Fla., one month ago for nationals. They did not win that tournament, but did place first in one of the four judging categories: teamwork.
“It’s our enthusiasm,” said Laurie Haas, another coach/parent, of the group that arrives for competitions with spotted-cow manicures and pom-pons in their ponytails. “They’re willing to be silly and do cheers.”
Haas said she was not surprised that an all-female crew could communicate and pull together better than mostly or entirely boy teams in a field that is 85 percent male.
“I think that’s the girl part of it, the empathy,” she said.
Which manifests itself in the Moovers’ all-inclusive distribution of duties, she said: Every Moover must know every role.
On most FLL clubs, the kids figure out which individual is best for each of the variety of roles played during robotics and presentations, and thus each member is specialized into one job. For the Woodlawn team, though, every girl has to learn how to do every job, and the nine-member squad rotates competition times in sets of three.
“Boys are more task-oriented, whereas, with our team, we really want everybody to do everything,” Haas said. “Boys are too competitive, maybe.”
But the Moover parents became pretty aggressive themselves in late February, when the chance to go to Germany emerged: Months before the national competition, the group learned that their state title had already qualified them for a slot in an international tournament. The girls were giddy with excitement, Haas said — but the grown-ups had to have a serious meeting to discuss whether the trip could happen.
“We had to give a decision by Feb. 24,” leaving them with only days to think of funding, she said. “The parents knew it was the opportunity of a lifetime.
“In the world of sixth grade, anything’s possible, because the money’s on the tree in the back yard,” Haas added.
But in the world of adults, most family budgets were tight, and a variety of employment and vacation situations were serious considerations. In the end, though, five of the nine families found ways to make the trip happen.
It was not until after they made the commitment that the sponsorship money began to appear. The Moovers’ trip is now funded in part by the Tooling and Manufacturing Association and manufacturing giant Bosch.
“We’re pretty ecstatic,” Haas said of the companies’ “very large” contributions. “The fact that we’re an all-girl team was appealing to them.”
She and her daughter, Claire, will take part in the international meet, which takes place June 8-9. With the roster cut in half, she said their mandate for teaching every girl every role came in unexpectedly handy: adjustments will have to be made, but the five making the trip already had the basics nailed down.
The Moovers are the best in one of the nation’s most populous states, and the best in the nation at one particular category — but now they face the best in the world. Haas laughed off the idea of losing confidence on the international stage.
His players, the Moovers, had something more on their mind, as well: An international competition after that in Europe. Starr told the kids plainly:
Don’t even think about it. The team does not have the money.
Starr was totally wrong. This week, his kids are at that international competition.
“None of us could afford to go,” Starr said Sunday. “Once we got the big grant, a lot of these problems went away.”
The Moovers are an all-girl, all-sixth-grade team from Woodlawn Middle School in the First Lego League, which promotes science and engineering by showing kids how those two fields can be fun. The fun comes by playing with Legos — the teams must build motorized robots out of the plastic bricks and program them to drive around a game board, completing a set number of tasks in the shortest time span possible.
Later this week, the crew will time their robot against 63 counterparts from Brazil, Israel, Canada, South Africa, Guatemala and other nations at a global-level competition in Mannheim, Germany.
The Moovers are finishing their third season of competition; in January, they won the FLL state tournament in Arlington Heights, qualifying them for a trip to Winter Haven, Fla., one month ago for nationals. They did not win that tournament, but did place first in one of the four judging categories: teamwork.
“It’s our enthusiasm,” said Laurie Haas, another coach/parent, of the group that arrives for competitions with spotted-cow manicures and pom-pons in their ponytails. “They’re willing to be silly and do cheers.”
Haas said she was not surprised that an all-female crew could communicate and pull together better than mostly or entirely boy teams in a field that is 85 percent male.
“I think that’s the girl part of it, the empathy,” she said.
Which manifests itself in the Moovers’ all-inclusive distribution of duties, she said: Every Moover must know every role.
On most FLL clubs, the kids figure out which individual is best for each of the variety of roles played during robotics and presentations, and thus each member is specialized into one job. For the Woodlawn team, though, every girl has to learn how to do every job, and the nine-member squad rotates competition times in sets of three.
“Boys are more task-oriented, whereas, with our team, we really want everybody to do everything,” Haas said. “Boys are too competitive, maybe.”
But the Moover parents became pretty aggressive themselves in late February, when the chance to go to Germany emerged: Months before the national competition, the group learned that their state title had already qualified them for a slot in an international tournament. The girls were giddy with excitement, Haas said — but the grown-ups had to have a serious meeting to discuss whether the trip could happen.
“We had to give a decision by Feb. 24,” leaving them with only days to think of funding, she said. “The parents knew it was the opportunity of a lifetime.
“In the world of sixth grade, anything’s possible, because the money’s on the tree in the back yard,” Haas added.
But in the world of adults, most family budgets were tight, and a variety of employment and vacation situations were serious considerations. In the end, though, five of the nine families found ways to make the trip happen.
It was not until after they made the commitment that the sponsorship money began to appear. The Moovers’ trip is now funded in part by the Tooling and Manufacturing Association and manufacturing giant Bosch.
“We’re pretty ecstatic,” Haas said of the companies’ “very large” contributions. “The fact that we’re an all-girl team was appealing to them.”
She and her daughter, Claire, will take part in the international meet, which takes place June 8-9. With the roster cut in half, she said their mandate for teaching every girl every role came in unexpectedly handy: adjustments will have to be made, but the five making the trip already had the basics nailed down.
The Moovers are the best in one of the nation’s most populous states, and the best in the nation at one particular category — but now they face the best in the world. Haas laughed off the idea of losing confidence on the international stage.
2012年6月4日星期一
Firing up a new venture
What started out as a hobby for Aimee Gurtis has turned into a new business venture called Whim Wham Pottery and Art Studio in Ormond Beach.
The studio, at 378-B West Granada Boulevard in the Granada Plaza shopping center, welcomes walk-ins to sit down and paint their own pottery pieces.
The pieces, ordered from vendors, are already made and ready to be painted with glazes and fired in a kiln. Customers also have the option of making their own pieces using wet clay. Other projects are also being offered such as glass fusion, mosaics and tie-dye.
The studio has five employees, but Gurtis may be hiring more depending on how many children are registered for the camp activities being offered over the summer.
The summer camp is one strategy Gurtis is using to attract customers.
Gurtis, a first-time business owner, said she decided to open her shop after visiting similar art studios with her children and seeing how people of all ages enjoyed doing the crafts. She said it was a combination of seeing how much fun her kids were having as well as how much she enjoyed the activity that made her realize what a great idea it was for a business.
She said she wants her own studio to offer a relaxing and fun environment that's welcoming to people of all ages and levels of artistic ability.
She said she has been taking art classes for most of her life and that it has always been something she enjoys doing.
"It's a mix of all the things I enjoy and know how to do," she said.
Gurtis earned a degree in marketing and public relations from the University of Central Florida and worked for the Council on Aging of Volusia County before quitting to become a stay-at-home mom to her three children several years ago.
Gurtis came up with the name Whim Wham from a project she worked on while studying marketing and public relations. It was originally the name for a made-up coffee shop that her class project was based around.
She said after brainstorming with her family, they all agreed that Whim Wham was as fun and whimsical as the business itself.
Gurtis co-owns the art studio with her husband, Andrew Gurtis, vice president of operations at Daytona International Speedway. He has helped her with the business side of things -- such as negotiating the lease for the space and helping set up the studio, she said.
The shop space previously housed a Cat Care Clinic.
Gurtis did some minor renovations to the space before opening her studio.
Gurtis and her husband, who live in Ormond Beach, dipped into their savings to fund the $40,000 launch of the business, she said.
Even though Gurtis has never run a business before, she said her involvement in the community and background in marketing should help her business thrive.
Gurtis, who has been an active member in Junior League since 2006, hosted a Ladies Night for the volunteer organization at her shop April 26 as a test run.
Whim Wham officially opened May 4.
Since launching her business, she has joined Ormond Beach Main Street and Ormond Beach Mainstreet Arts District. Gurtis said she is also planning on joining the Ormond Beach Chamber of Commerce.
Ned Harper, director of the Small Business Development Center at Daytona State College, said hobby businesses, such as Gurtis's, are able to thrive even in this economy if they are able to market themselves properly and make the community aware that they exist.
"The hardest part is getting customers in the door," he said.
Harper said new businesses face a number of challenges and that it is important for owners to do their research and be aware of not only the market they are trying to reach, but also their competition, and to be sure to properly price their products and/or services.
Setting prices that are too high can chase away potential customers, but setting them too low can make it difficult for a business to turn a profit.
"You see people with a hobby or an interest, and they do not do the research," said Harper.
Gurtis said she spent more than a year doing research before launching her business.
That research included joining the national Fresno, Calif.-based Contemporary Ceramic Studios Association, which provided information about the different aspects of running a ceramics studio.
She also made a marketing plan that includes creating a website for the studio and she is also using social media to reach out to potential customers. She also plans to eventually work with schools and other local organizations to host events.
The studio, at 378-B West Granada Boulevard in the Granada Plaza shopping center, welcomes walk-ins to sit down and paint their own pottery pieces.
The pieces, ordered from vendors, are already made and ready to be painted with glazes and fired in a kiln. Customers also have the option of making their own pieces using wet clay. Other projects are also being offered such as glass fusion, mosaics and tie-dye.
The studio has five employees, but Gurtis may be hiring more depending on how many children are registered for the camp activities being offered over the summer.
The summer camp is one strategy Gurtis is using to attract customers.
Gurtis, a first-time business owner, said she decided to open her shop after visiting similar art studios with her children and seeing how people of all ages enjoyed doing the crafts. She said it was a combination of seeing how much fun her kids were having as well as how much she enjoyed the activity that made her realize what a great idea it was for a business.
She said she wants her own studio to offer a relaxing and fun environment that's welcoming to people of all ages and levels of artistic ability.
She said she has been taking art classes for most of her life and that it has always been something she enjoys doing.
"It's a mix of all the things I enjoy and know how to do," she said.
Gurtis earned a degree in marketing and public relations from the University of Central Florida and worked for the Council on Aging of Volusia County before quitting to become a stay-at-home mom to her three children several years ago.
Gurtis came up with the name Whim Wham from a project she worked on while studying marketing and public relations. It was originally the name for a made-up coffee shop that her class project was based around.
She said after brainstorming with her family, they all agreed that Whim Wham was as fun and whimsical as the business itself.
Gurtis co-owns the art studio with her husband, Andrew Gurtis, vice president of operations at Daytona International Speedway. He has helped her with the business side of things -- such as negotiating the lease for the space and helping set up the studio, she said.
The shop space previously housed a Cat Care Clinic.
Gurtis did some minor renovations to the space before opening her studio.
Gurtis and her husband, who live in Ormond Beach, dipped into their savings to fund the $40,000 launch of the business, she said.
Even though Gurtis has never run a business before, she said her involvement in the community and background in marketing should help her business thrive.
Gurtis, who has been an active member in Junior League since 2006, hosted a Ladies Night for the volunteer organization at her shop April 26 as a test run.
Whim Wham officially opened May 4.
Since launching her business, she has joined Ormond Beach Main Street and Ormond Beach Mainstreet Arts District. Gurtis said she is also planning on joining the Ormond Beach Chamber of Commerce.
Ned Harper, director of the Small Business Development Center at Daytona State College, said hobby businesses, such as Gurtis's, are able to thrive even in this economy if they are able to market themselves properly and make the community aware that they exist.
"The hardest part is getting customers in the door," he said.
Harper said new businesses face a number of challenges and that it is important for owners to do their research and be aware of not only the market they are trying to reach, but also their competition, and to be sure to properly price their products and/or services.
Setting prices that are too high can chase away potential customers, but setting them too low can make it difficult for a business to turn a profit.
"You see people with a hobby or an interest, and they do not do the research," said Harper.
Gurtis said she spent more than a year doing research before launching her business.
That research included joining the national Fresno, Calif.-based Contemporary Ceramic Studios Association, which provided information about the different aspects of running a ceramics studio.
She also made a marketing plan that includes creating a website for the studio and she is also using social media to reach out to potential customers. She also plans to eventually work with schools and other local organizations to host events.
2012年6月3日星期日
More and more, Virginia farmers are feeding world
A plow etches the dark soil of the Tidewater – an age-old act that ripples around the world.
Four hundred years after tobacco sprouted at Jamestown and bailed out the foundering colony, agriculture remains the backbone of Virginia. Few industries can touch its economic impact – a $55 billion engine stoking 350,000 jobs – or its far-flung reach.
Last year, nearly $2.4 billion worth of homegrown products was exported around the globe – a record for Virginia agribusiness and proof that, despite urban sprawl and warp-speed lives, farming is far from dead.
So far, in fact, that Gov. Bob McDonnell is gambling on Virginia’s oldest occupation to save the day again. New trade agreements are cracking doors to dozens of markets, places ripe for the kind of business that can help heal a recession hangover.
So, while schools clamored for money and potholes proliferated, $500,000 was squeezed from last year’s state budget to hire trade reps in China and India, where they’re hawking everything from Suffolk peanuts to Albemarle County apples.
Next, McDonnell wants “eyes and ears on the ground” in Eastern Europe, North Africa and Central America, says Todd Haymore, state secretary of agriculture and forestry:
The wheat whispers, the dry rustle of countless bristled heads bowing to the afternoon breeze.
The reverence is not lost on Flanagan, although he probably wouldn’t use that word. There are too many farmers in his DNA to permit such fanciful notions.
Flanagan, 37, is at least the fourth generation. He only knows: “I like being out here, in the field.”
There’s no time for reflection anyway. On this afternoon, Flanagan is the only agricultural extension agent on the job for miles around.
Extension agents are the industry’s middle link, the go-to for farmers who need help battling mysterious beetles or navigating bureaucracy. They also serve as an “extension” of the state’s agricultural institutions, a conduit for research conducted at schools like Virginia Tech.
Any locality with a hint of rural wants its own agent, but not all can swing the $40,000 or so annual salary, even with the state kicking in a share. Suffolk – with 70,000-some acres in farmland, the most of any city in South Hampton Roads – has gone without an agent for two years.
Neighboring agents try to fill gaps, but this spring, when back surgery took out Chesapeake’s extension agent, Flanagan – hired by Virginia Beach just a few months ago – found himself spread plenty thin:
“I’m still new, so I’m trying to say ‘yes’ to everyone. I guess I’ll have to get over that.”
Tall, lanky, wearing a ball cap and faded jeans, Flanagan is cast for the part. He has a college degree in agriculture and tills the same Pungo soil his great-grandfather did over a century ago. His parents and sister’s family live in houses next to his. Jeannie, his wife, runs their produce stand. Their five children know 4-H better than cable TV. And women are always addressed as “ma’am.”
He took the extension job because the home farm just can’t cover the growing family’s bills, much less the needed benefits. Moments like this, walking through 120 acres of thigh-high winter wheat off Centerville Turnpike, compensate for the desk work.
“I’m not much for paper pushing,” he says, fingers trailing along rasping tips as he pushes through the crop he’s been asked to diagnose. To the uninitiated, the wheat looks lush, but the practiced eye recognizes the uneven, reedy growth of a “thin stand.”
The farmer who planted this plot last fall is at a loss. So much can go wrong, especially when the timeless enemies, like bugs, weather and disease, are aggravated by new twists, like chemical resistance and climate change.
Flanagan points to the mud that’s sucking at the soles of his work boots. The grower rents this field, a common industry practice, and Flanagan isn’t familiar with its crop history. But he does know that two painful years of drought have lured some farmers onto land that’s never been right for wheat before.
“Wheat doesn’t like wet feet,” he explains. “So when you finally get a lot of rain, like we did this spring, you can be in trouble.”
With a dozen soil types and terrain that runs from mountains to sea, geography molds Virginia’s agriculture. Pasture dominates in the west, where the ground is long on rock, short on topsoil, and the slopes aren’t suitable for row crops’ massive machinery. Grain farms lie closer to the coast, where soil is enriched by the watershed and huge harvesters can straddle the level land.
In these parts, the breadbasket is a bastion of corrugated fields on the Eastern Shore, Suffolk, lower Chesapeake and below Virginia Beach’s Green Line, an urban growth boundary intended to safeguard the rural character of the southern part of the city. Cropland is under siege across the state, capped in asphalt or lost to development at the rate of 100,000 acres a year.
Working to offset its loss: modern science. Cross-breeding, genetic tinkering and chemical advances are conjuring better yields – a doubling of U.S. productivity over the past 50 years.
“Without that technology, we wouldn’t be feeding ourselves,” Flanagan says, “much less half of the world, like we are now.”
True, the nation’s signature farms lie in the Midwest – Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska – with their endless amber waves of grain. But Virginia farmland has a storied legacy. The grand homes of the Colonial landscape vouch for its historic fertility.
Now, silver grain tanks signal the major operators – the 50 or so outfits that helped Virginia Beach produce almost 2 million bushels of wheat, soybeans and corn last year. Harvests in Chesapeake and Suffolk were at least twice that.
And yet, despite its size and impact, agriculture blends into the background – such a routine part of the view that it’s barely noticed.
“I was giving a talk at a school the other day,” Flanagan says, “and the kids were asking things like, ‘Where do farmers sleep? What do farmers eat?’ People don’t really seem to know where their food comes from anymore.”
Four hundred years after tobacco sprouted at Jamestown and bailed out the foundering colony, agriculture remains the backbone of Virginia. Few industries can touch its economic impact – a $55 billion engine stoking 350,000 jobs – or its far-flung reach.
Last year, nearly $2.4 billion worth of homegrown products was exported around the globe – a record for Virginia agribusiness and proof that, despite urban sprawl and warp-speed lives, farming is far from dead.
So far, in fact, that Gov. Bob McDonnell is gambling on Virginia’s oldest occupation to save the day again. New trade agreements are cracking doors to dozens of markets, places ripe for the kind of business that can help heal a recession hangover.
So, while schools clamored for money and potholes proliferated, $500,000 was squeezed from last year’s state budget to hire trade reps in China and India, where they’re hawking everything from Suffolk peanuts to Albemarle County apples.
Next, McDonnell wants “eyes and ears on the ground” in Eastern Europe, North Africa and Central America, says Todd Haymore, state secretary of agriculture and forestry:
The wheat whispers, the dry rustle of countless bristled heads bowing to the afternoon breeze.
The reverence is not lost on Flanagan, although he probably wouldn’t use that word. There are too many farmers in his DNA to permit such fanciful notions.
Flanagan, 37, is at least the fourth generation. He only knows: “I like being out here, in the field.”
There’s no time for reflection anyway. On this afternoon, Flanagan is the only agricultural extension agent on the job for miles around.
Extension agents are the industry’s middle link, the go-to for farmers who need help battling mysterious beetles or navigating bureaucracy. They also serve as an “extension” of the state’s agricultural institutions, a conduit for research conducted at schools like Virginia Tech.
Any locality with a hint of rural wants its own agent, but not all can swing the $40,000 or so annual salary, even with the state kicking in a share. Suffolk – with 70,000-some acres in farmland, the most of any city in South Hampton Roads – has gone without an agent for two years.
Neighboring agents try to fill gaps, but this spring, when back surgery took out Chesapeake’s extension agent, Flanagan – hired by Virginia Beach just a few months ago – found himself spread plenty thin:
“I’m still new, so I’m trying to say ‘yes’ to everyone. I guess I’ll have to get over that.”
Tall, lanky, wearing a ball cap and faded jeans, Flanagan is cast for the part. He has a college degree in agriculture and tills the same Pungo soil his great-grandfather did over a century ago. His parents and sister’s family live in houses next to his. Jeannie, his wife, runs their produce stand. Their five children know 4-H better than cable TV. And women are always addressed as “ma’am.”
He took the extension job because the home farm just can’t cover the growing family’s bills, much less the needed benefits. Moments like this, walking through 120 acres of thigh-high winter wheat off Centerville Turnpike, compensate for the desk work.
“I’m not much for paper pushing,” he says, fingers trailing along rasping tips as he pushes through the crop he’s been asked to diagnose. To the uninitiated, the wheat looks lush, but the practiced eye recognizes the uneven, reedy growth of a “thin stand.”
The farmer who planted this plot last fall is at a loss. So much can go wrong, especially when the timeless enemies, like bugs, weather and disease, are aggravated by new twists, like chemical resistance and climate change.
Flanagan points to the mud that’s sucking at the soles of his work boots. The grower rents this field, a common industry practice, and Flanagan isn’t familiar with its crop history. But he does know that two painful years of drought have lured some farmers onto land that’s never been right for wheat before.
“Wheat doesn’t like wet feet,” he explains. “So when you finally get a lot of rain, like we did this spring, you can be in trouble.”
With a dozen soil types and terrain that runs from mountains to sea, geography molds Virginia’s agriculture. Pasture dominates in the west, where the ground is long on rock, short on topsoil, and the slopes aren’t suitable for row crops’ massive machinery. Grain farms lie closer to the coast, where soil is enriched by the watershed and huge harvesters can straddle the level land.
In these parts, the breadbasket is a bastion of corrugated fields on the Eastern Shore, Suffolk, lower Chesapeake and below Virginia Beach’s Green Line, an urban growth boundary intended to safeguard the rural character of the southern part of the city. Cropland is under siege across the state, capped in asphalt or lost to development at the rate of 100,000 acres a year.
Working to offset its loss: modern science. Cross-breeding, genetic tinkering and chemical advances are conjuring better yields – a doubling of U.S. productivity over the past 50 years.
“Without that technology, we wouldn’t be feeding ourselves,” Flanagan says, “much less half of the world, like we are now.”
True, the nation’s signature farms lie in the Midwest – Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska – with their endless amber waves of grain. But Virginia farmland has a storied legacy. The grand homes of the Colonial landscape vouch for its historic fertility.
Now, silver grain tanks signal the major operators – the 50 or so outfits that helped Virginia Beach produce almost 2 million bushels of wheat, soybeans and corn last year. Harvests in Chesapeake and Suffolk were at least twice that.
And yet, despite its size and impact, agriculture blends into the background – such a routine part of the view that it’s barely noticed.
“I was giving a talk at a school the other day,” Flanagan says, “and the kids were asking things like, ‘Where do farmers sleep? What do farmers eat?’ People don’t really seem to know where their food comes from anymore.”
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