This obviously applies to us all...wonder how we can convince everyone?

Mountain group says Ky. needs to grow own businesses

By Bill Wolfe • bwolfe@courier-journal.com • August 25, 2008

Kentucky needs to offer stronger support for entrepreneurs and focus more on developing home-grown businesses rather than on recruiting businesses from outside, according to a report commissioned by the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development.

The report, released today, said the state “faces serious challenges” in its small-business activity, lagging the national average in growth rates and income. Kentucky “has much work to do in expanding entrepreneurship across the state.”

“Kentucky as a whole has not made adequate economic progress over the last 30 years,” Jason Bailey, research and policy director for the association, said in an interview. “We are largely stuck in an old approach to economic development that’s really based on recruiting industry with the use of tax incentives.”

That approach is part of economic development, “but increasingly it’s not enough, and states need to turn more of their attention to promoting growth from within,” Bailey said.

The report said Kentucky has many of the tools needed to foster small businesses, such as programs of the state Cabinet for Economic Development and at state universities, community colleges and technical colleges. “Challenges remain in connecting the dots” between various programs, however, and there is a general lack of awareness and lack of appreciation of the potential of homegrown development, it said.

Recommendations included broad-based “entrepreneurship education,” more access to microlending, seed capital and angel investing and the creation of an Entrepreneurship and Small Business Commission

The report doesn’t make specific recommendations on the amount of money that would be needed or where it would come from, Bailey said.

The report was written by the Rural Policy Research Institute’s Center for Rural Entrepreneurship, a national research and policy center created in 2001. The Mountain Association is a 32-year-old community development organization that works in eastern Kentucky and Central Appalachia.

Reporter Bill Wolfe can be reached at (502) 582-4248.

You got to watch this

Wish we could go to this conference...

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/michael_pollan_gives_a_plant_s_eye_view.html

The Last Lecture...

Mary and I decided to extend a business trip into a little vacation last week. I had to be in Covington, KY and I had this nagging urge to get on the Blue Ridge Parkway again. I wanted to be somewhere quiet, somewhere with little cell phone coverage, somewhere where commercial traffic and commercial establishments are not allowed. I wanted to take the new Mini out somewhere and get lost with it. I did that...and some of what I wanted to achieve was out there, but a lot of it was not possible. The worst of it was that Randy Pausch died while I was gone.

Like millions of others, I felt like I knew him from the "Last Lecture" he gave that attracted so much attention over the last few months. He was such a beautiful soul...well worth saving, yet he was not saved. I cannot explain why this man and his words and his premature passing have had such an effect on me. Maybe it is because his story is all of our stories...it is just that his video of our life was, perhaps, on fast forward. And, in a way, his story is also applicable to what I saw and experienced on my recent journey.

The Blue Ridge Parkway is in Virginia and North Carolina. It is sort of a road, sort of a National Park, but much more than the simple combination of the two. The construction of the parkway started during the depth of the Great Depression. FDR hatched many ideas in his effort to save democracy from itself during the 30's. While I am particularly fond of another of his ideas, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Blue Ridge Parkway is certainly the most beautiful of all of them. BRP was not built by professional road builders. It was actually built by folks of all walks of life who had one thing in common; they needed a job and they needed hope that the ravages of capitalism run amok would not mean that they would be standing in bread lines for the rest of their lives. In eternal thanks for the jobs that came with the parkway, they built something that transcends the plans they were executing. They built a work of art that you can experience in a car or on foot instead of in a museum. They built something that expresses their thanks for saving their lives.

The route of the parkway is simply the Jugular vein of North America. It runs down the spine of the Appalachian Mountains, and, most importantly, is protected from all that is modern and flashy and glitzy. Traffic moves slowly there, the speed limit is 45 MPH, but you really never notice that, for even though modern vehicles normally strain to go that slowly, on the parkway the veil of quiet and peace (only interrupted sporadically by occasional immature motorcycle riders who still feel the need to alter the exhaust systems on their rides so as to attract maximum attention and wreak maximum havoc on the rest of us), acts as sort of a semi-solid medium that impedes the progress of all vehicles...and no one seems to complain. Like Randy Pausch, it is a beautiful place, with a supremely valuable soul, and, like Randy, it is sick and needs redemption.

I don't know the politics of funding for national treasures like the parkway, but I can tell you that something is wrong there. Miles and miles of the most beautiful portions of the parkway are now closed due to landslides, rock slides, and general failures of roadway. The Jugular vein is clogged. To navigate around these closures, those seeking the comfort of the parkway's last lecture are forced from the embrace of the parkway into the obscene cacophony of trucks and fast food joints that makes up the world outside of the parkway. A conspiracy theorist might conclude that the parkway is being persecuted for its aversion to commerce and that the folks seeking refuge in its arms are being forced out into the commercial world where certain forces feel we all belong...oh well, that is what an conspiracy theorist might say.

All I know for sure is that the parkway is in need of better funding and more work. It is a soul worth saving. It seems that all the king's horses and all the king's men were not able to put Randy Pausch back together again, but I know we can save the Blue Ridge Parkway. It has many more lectures left in it for all of us, and I hope all of us are willing to communicate with our elected leaders that we want this little sliver of heaven saved and we want it fixed and we want it open to receive us now. Tomorrow is too late.

Travis should not have gotten this started...

It was he, after all, who started us down the path to sustainability and localism by giving out copies of Deep Economy. After that came Omnivore's Dilemma and now I just finished The Small-Mart Revolution. Now I cannot sleep at night. When I do I dream about what we could do to awaken Glasgow so that everyone can experience this epiphany. There are so many things that need doing. We need to study where money leaks out of our economy. We need to help everyone understand those leaks. We need a database of truly local businesses. We need a way to make sure everyone knows about them. We need to help everyone understand why we should be bending over backwards to patronize those businesses. We need to form a database of businesses that we need to plug the money leaking out. We need, we need, we need. This is really more than we can expect Stephen Biggers to take on by himself.

In fact, the more I think about it. I don't know how many people it would take to really start making a dent in all of this. Want to get together and tilt at windmills?

It Aint Just in South Africa

Check out this link
to a story from the LA Times. This is not just an interesting little bit about something happening a world away. There is another utility whose sales of energy far outstrip their capacity to produce. This utility is a bit more local, but they too have allowed low energy costs to send an incorrect signal to the public which resulted in sales leaping far ahead of where they should. The name of that utility is TVA. These are the folks who also serve Glasgow. Everything in that story could be written about our region of the US within a couple of years. Is that relaxing?

Newsflash - Locavore Named Word of the Year

Check it out at link.

How Strong is Our Commitment to Streams?

Photo by Jim Clark - www.jimclarkphotography.com

Is it strong enough for us to join the folks at Kentuckians for the Commonwealth on Valentine's Day? They are having a rally in Frankfort that day for folks like us who think there is something very wrong about coal companies being allowed to blow the tops off mountains and, in doing so, bury the headwaters of the sorts of mountain streams where we like to stand while waving a nine foot long stick. Read more about it here.

I think we ought to go. According to the site linked above, our legislators think this is no big deal because there is no general concern from the public on this matter. I say we help them reverse that trend. What say ye members of our little cabal?

At Least It Was Not in Kentucky

But it certainly could have been. Heaven help us...

Nobel winner's speech at Montana high school canceled over global warming controversy
BY MATTHEW BROWN
Associated Press Writer
The Associated Press
updated 4:34 p.m. CT, Thurs., Jan. 17, 2008

BILLINGS, Mont. - A climate scientist's speech to high school students was canceled because members of the rural community were concerned the Nobel Peace Prize laureate's message on climate change would be "anti-agriculture," the superintentent said Thursday.

Choteau schools Superintendent Kevin St. John said school board members pressured him to bring in someone with an opposing viewpoint to speak to the school's 130 students, and he thought canceling the speech was the reasonable and neutral option.

"Nobody wants to believe in science and promote science more than we do," said St. John, who is in his first year running the school district. "It was my decision to bring him in and it was my decision (to cancel him.)"

University of Montana scientist Steve Running said he had never before been canceled in any venue, by any organization. "I think there's a faction of society that is willfully ignorant, that they just don't want to know the facts about this," he said.

Running is a member of the U.N. science panel that shared last year's Nobel with former Vice President Al Gore for raising awareness of global warming and its impact on the Earth.

Some critics are concerned that whatever steps are taken to combat global warming will harm the agriculture industry.

Choteau is a ranching and farming community of about 1,800 at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in central Montana. Members of the school board declined to comment, referring questions to St. John.

The evening of the canceled school speech, Jan. 10, Running spoke in Choteau at the invitation of an environmental group, mostly to a crowd of adults. St. John said many students were attending a basketball game at that time.

The cancellation prompted several people to write to local newspapers to denounce the district's actions.

Choteau High School senior Kip Barhaugh questioned school officials for "spoon-feeding" students information on climate change.

"With this single act, some members of the Choteau School Board not only denied its students access to valuable information about the future of our planet, but they demonstrated their short-sightedness," Barhaugh wrote to the Great Falls Tribune.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22716304/

Great television programming abounds

If you really use the power of the program guide that comes with your digital set top box, you can be amazed at what you can find. For example, have you ever paid any attention to VH1 Classic Rock? There is an outstanding program or two on there. Of late I have become really thrilled with Classic Albums. This hour long program features the story behind the great classic albums of our time. Tonight I am watching the story of The Band and how they created the album of the same name which I consider to be one of the best albums of all time.

So I was just looking through what is coming up next and find that on Tuesday January 22 at 4:00 Classic Albums will be covering the story behind Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon! You got to watch that! Right after that at 5:00 will be the story of Fleetwood Mac and Rumours. This is must see stuff!

Michael Pollan Rocks

Well, at this point it looks like we might not get to attend Michael Pollan's interview and dinner in Louisville on Friday because it is sold out! I must say that creates quite a set of mixed feelings. First, I am very disappointed that we are going to miss out on this opportunity to see and hear an extremely thought provoking author right here in the Commonwealth; but, on the other hand, I am pretty thrilled that an author of this caliber with a message that seems a bit outlandish by Kentucky standards, can sell out a venue in Kentucky! Perhaps there is reason to hope!

All is not lost even if we discover that he sold it out because there were only fifty seats available because KET is taping the event and it will be on KET2 on Tuesday February 5 at 9 p.m. (that is channel 23 on EPB cable). You also need to click hereand see the many wonderful resources and copies of articles Michael has written on the subject of our food abyss over the last few years. We can likely learn as much here as we would have by actually seeing him.

Some of these need to go with us on next trip...

This morning's Courier Journal had this nice article about a guy making great cigars right here in the Commonwealth. It has been years since I smoked one of my collection, but this gets me interested again. You can get them at Chuck's in BG and several places in Louisville. Here is a link to their website.

Is the sun coming up in the west this morning?

Maybe not, but something big is happening out toward Iowa! While I am not yet a big Obama supporter, I see some interesting things in yesterday's caucuses there. Most interesting is that massive amounts of money by candidates like Romney and Clinton did not produce winning votes! Can there be anything more exciting? Could this mean that we are capable of liberating our Commonwealth from the likes of McConnell and Bunning?

You know these guys. They are the ones who just helped ram the Senate version of this year's Farm Bill through even though everyone on the planet outside of the corporate wags of Cargill and Archer-Daniels Midland, etc. are against it. This bill continues to dole out heaps of money to big corporate farmers who are already rich beyond our imagination. The fact that they are already reaping such huge profits that even all-out corruption and tax fraud cannot hide the profits is not even considered in this bill. It aims to heap up additional subsidies for them as if our nation is suffering from over production of revenue and out of places to store it!

There is a great amount of information about the most corrupt of this group at this link I urge you to go there and see who is stealing our money and laughing at us night and day. If the folks in Iowa can ignore the massive media campaigns that big money buys, is there hope for the people of the Commonwealth of Kentucky? I sure hope so.