Playing the Game

Well I found an internship shooting for an NGO for the summer that I applied for on Friday, the deadline was Saturday and the guy got back to me on Monday. So it seems like he may be interested but I feel like I am playing a game. The game being how much am I going to tell them about what I am willing to do before they even interview me. It is an NGO where I would be overseas and I would have to pay my entire way so they want to know if I am ok with that. Well quite frankly I don't know, it depends on where I have to go, when I would be going, how long I would be going. But these are things I would find out AFTER the interview and he is asking these questions of me BEFORE the interview to see if he even wants to interview me. I have had this happen to me before where it seems like the process of the interview is going backwards. I wish we could just put all our cards on the table but I have a fear of that because they are the ones holding the trump card.

Sarah
photographer/recent graduate

Glens Falls has most unemployment of any NY metro area

This from the Glens Falls Post Star:

Yet again, the Glens Falls metropolitan statistical area has posted the highest unemployment rate in the state at 10 percent, according to data released Thursday by New York's Department of Labor.

The figure, up from 9.3 percent last month, translates to about 6,700 jobless people and marks a 15-year high for the area, which includes Warren and Washington counties.

Plattsburgh's Home Bistro files Chapter 11

According to the Plattsburgh Press Republican, a company that employs 68 full and part-time employees is filing for bankruptcy.

(Company officials) have taken this action in an attempt to preserve their assets and operations with the hope of either continuing in business or selling to a buyer who will continue the business,” Brennan said.

Home Bistro cooks and prepares gourmet meals that are flash frozen and shipped throughout the continental United States. It accepts phone, fax, e-mail or online orders.

How Rude

Around about late September 2008 while I was still in school in my last semester in London, England I started sending out my resume materials to potential jobs and internships for when I returned. I would estimate since September I have sent out 70 packages of my materials. Even before returning from London I started receiving rejections or notices that the internships were canceled due to the economy.

I have had two interviews from all of those packages, one in person where I traveled to Newark, NJ and one on the phone. Neither of them have told me the results of their interviews. I have emailed to show my continued interest in the job and still nothing. Even when I email to see if people have receive my packages, I get nothing back. I mean really, we all know how quickly you can hit the reply button and type one or two lines. I just feel it would be nice professional practice. I don't expect an immediate response but none I think is rude.

Sarah
photographer/recent graduate

Creating jobs for ourselves

When my husband and I decided to move to the North Country and settle down we knew that we'd probably have to create jobs for ourselves because we fit into that middle category of people for whom work is hard to find here--we have more than high school education, but not PhDs.

So that's exactly what we did.

We spent time looking around for what our town, Canton, was in need of and decided that a 'cafe' seemed like the most viable business option. After doing enough research to determine that it could be an economically viable business, we launched into the project.

1 3/4 years later, we're not only still standing, but we're growing. I wouldn't say that we're growing by leaps and bounds, but our numbers are moving in an upward direction.

We wonder about why we haven't seen decline in business, as a result of the economic downturn, and I have a few ideas.

Over the next couple of blog sessions I'll write about my ideas. (Too much of anything all at once on a blog is a bad thing.)

For now, I will leave it at this: This past week was Spring break for the various universities around the area--a time when our business drops significantly.
However, something funny happened.
Last week we saw a 28% increase in sales (compared to last year's spring break). This number is twice as high as our average increase in sales, for any "normal" week (compared to numbers for last year.)

We experienced a bit of a bump because it was St. Patrick's Day, but this number would suggest that the locals are coming out more frequently than we had once thought (compared to university traffic, that is.)

hmmm..

a job was created this week

Three years ago I founded the SunFeather Foundation...which was incorporated to be a community service oriented 'arm' of my company. The idea was/is to raise funds through my business as well as the local community and then use those funds to make mini grants to people who want to start up a small business. Since I founded my business with $15.00....I KNOW that a business can begin with very little money. After a news release in 06, a wonderfully dynamic board of directors magically appeared overnight and we've been meeting 4 times a year since. Over the past three years we have made microenterprise loans to 6 people all of whom are still in business today.
The most recent grant for $500.00 was made last week to Donald Murphy of Hopkinton.
His grant application outlined a new business called Rock Walls/ Creative Stone Work. The board loved his simple and likely to succeed idea. The $500.00 will cover his business license, business cards, cement mixer and cement. He has the truck, the trowel, the shovel and the back! He will be rebuilding old stone walls and new ones, walkways and outdoor grills out of native stone. Economic Stimulus begins at home!?!

Hello All

Hi - I'm a recent graduate with a master's degree in photojournalism from Syracuse University. I have had an internship at a daily paper that cemented to me that I want to be a photojournalist for a daily paper. I absolutely loved my time at that paper.

As you may have heard, newspapers are folding/downsizing left and right. I have run into issues with internships being canceled because of budget cuts and even one paper hiring because of cutbacks. Currently I am looking outside of the box for a job. Thinking that I can get a job doing something else in photography and then do the work I really want to do on my own time.

I am beyond frustrated with the economy because there isn't anything I feel like I can do to better my situation.

Sarah
photographer/recent graduate

Hard choices

I live in Moira, on a farm. We were dairy farmers, but now we raise grass-fed beef. For twenty years I’ve worked with people on public assistance, so I tend to see things through the prism of poverty.

Gas prices and oil prices had a huge effect on us- but the more abstract economic problems seem farther removed. If you’ve never been able to get a car loan, a tight credit market is all you’ve experienced. Vacations and retirement accounts don’t exist in the world of minimum-wage jobs. Being inured to deprivation makes want and need feel less shocking

Losing a job is devastating- but, if you’ve had a career where your talents were appreciated and rewarded, where you had confidence in your ability, that loss may register differently with you than a fast-food job loss to someone who didn’t count on stability. You may have a financial reserve to cushion you. The poor have fewer resources, so they might qualify for public assistance benefits. Or, they may be just above the qualifying levels, and desperation sets in.

It’s heart-wrenching to see new college graduates from the lower class. These are kids who didn’t have transportation to be at play practice- didn’t have washing machines to keep uniforms clean- so sports were out- but they have gone to school. The degrees that should be a ticket to professional jobs are now degrees that gave them debt- and jobs are scarce- they can’t get a car because of those student loans and the credit market- and they’re back home in their old bedroom, with an adolescent sibling.

It will be interesting to see where this all goes- Will we really change our priorities? Can we wean ourselves from Chinese plastic? How deeply are we wedded to the lives and the selves we’ve made?

Notes from Shari

Hi - I volunteered with this project to represent those in 'helping' organizations that struggle to fill in the gaps and the emergency needs of our friends and neighbors. The Church and Community Program has been involved in this endeavor for 36 years; for the past 14 years I have been the Director.

A lot has changed in these 14 years. My indoctrination included food, diapers, non-prescription prescriptions - and other 'small' needs. There were also requests for security deposits as the majority of landlords did not accept DSS guarantees. Most of these requests were filled.

This past winter the economic deterioration consequences for low-income families really raised its ugly head! Fuel, utilities, back rent - these became the most frequent requests. The cost of meeting these needs was incredible. No longer was one or two hundred dollars sufficient to solve the problem. In some cases it was a thousand dollars or more!

We discuss needs in terms of "how will you meet this need next month? Is this a one-time emergency, or an on-going need due to lack of funds.' It is truly difficult to address this with clients looking for a life ring! Next month, even next week seems impossible to ponder!

I have learned to do what I can; refer when possible; and work on priorities and long-range (next month!) plans. Hopefully we will all make it through these difficult times....

Shari

The Impact of the Economy on Me

I've been an entrepreneur most of my adult life - most recently as a co-founder of Independent Means, a company based in Santa Barbara, CA that provides financial education for children, famlies and private schools. (If you're interested in finding out more, our website is at www.independentmeans.com. )

After working at IMI for 13 years, I decided to try something different in late 2007 and took a job selling onsite corporate training at the American Management Association. After years of working out of a home office and bouncing ideas off of the dog and the cats, going to work with an office full of people was really appealing. Well, timing is everything, and I got laid off in late October. I'm one of the lucky ones, because I'm going to be able to go back to full time work with IMI in April. This experience has reminded me yet again about how critical it is to be able to create a job, not just take a job.

That said, as I was driving through some of the more remote areas of our Region last week, on my way from Saranac Lake to Watertown, I wondered how the folks living in communities such as Star Lake, etc. are surviving. What kind of jobs are they able to create when the population is so sparse? I hope we'll hear from some folks out there over the next several months.

Impact of the economy on an artist and arts advocate

I serve on the board of two not for profits, the Wyckoff Farmhouse Museum, the oldest building in NYS and oldest Dutch building in America, which is about to launch the first barn raising in NYC in over 150 years, and Creative Healing Connections, which hosts 2 retreats for women with cancer & other chronic diseases and will host a new retreat for women veterans this August. I have been hit by a dramatic increase in demands on my time by both organizations, as they both need to work much harder to raise funds; and at the same time, as an individual artist and arts consultant, I have experienced clients cut back or cancel work, I'm finding it harder to get paid for work done, and I am having to scramble to fill in an income gap that I hadn't expected. One North Country artist I know has decided to go back to college to get a nursing degree as a means of paying the bills. I believe that actually the arts will be more important to the North Country as a means of attracting visitors by their ability to help enhance the visitor's experience, a critical component in our ability to be more competitive. I believe attractions need the arts more, not less.

"What we've got here is going to waste"

My interview this morning with Greg Gardner prompted a quick call from Tim Chase, a union painter in Chateaugay, outside Malone. (He'd post himself, but he's suffering from a quality of life issue -- dial up access to the Internet.)
He heard Greg Gardner say there's no "model" of economic development that will work in the region, and he took issue. But I think the two are really very much on the same page. Chase said he's sick of people saying "there's nothing in Malone." He talked about unused assets like the now-closed ski area at Titus Mt., the fairground-harness track-stage in Malone that's used one week of the year, even heat and steam "wasted" at a nearby chip plant. ("Where are the greenhouses?") He looks north and sees a market of millions of Canadians. He looks east and sees 20 Nordic ski centers in Vermont ready to take advantage of them -- and how many -- two? -- in the Adirondacks? Etc., etc.; you get the idea.
Gardner talked about Richard Florida's ideas about the "creative class" -- improving the quality of life to attract people who could turn unused assets into working assets. Chase says we need leadership that's not stuck on the old "economic development" ideas: "What we have here is being wasted," he said. "People need to wake up." And he's really sick of the classic response to new ideas: "you can't do THAT."
posted by
Martha Foley

Official welcome!

Welcome to bloggers and blog readers alike! For this "Year of Hard Choices" blog, NCPR News has invited 10 people to share their thoughts and experiences about the economic downturn as it's felt here in the North Country. This is the first time we've undertaken an online group blog. We're really excited to see where it goes, and we hope you, the blog reader, will also contribute by posting your comments.

I'll let each of our bloggers introduce themselves and start to tell the stories of how the economy is affecting them. Here are a couple comments to a test post from last week (man, are they eager bloggers or what??!!).

Melinda Little, an entrepreneur in Saranac Lake, wrote:

One of the trickle down effects of the economy that worries me is the impact on people's ability to care for their pets. I'm on the board of the Tri-Lakes Humane Society so I'm getting a first-hand view of what's happening. It's too soon to really assess, but we got two new cats dropped off earlier this week because of their owner's inability to care for them. Stay tuned.

And Sandy Maine, owner of Sunfeather Soap Company in Parishville, wrote:

I've noticed that my employees are very stressed about the security of their jobs... with lay offs and cut backs all around them they wonder if they will be next. They are making more errors and succumbing to illness more than usual. One took on part time work to insulate a possible lay off and it has made things difficult for the rest of us trying to work around her new schedule.

Two victories last week: Two employees out of 6 who participated in the St. Lawrence County Health Initiative smoking cessation program last year made it to their one year anniversary. Two other of the 6 who had quit the program last year....just started a NEW quit campaign on their own. Our second victory: Over the past year we have adjusted our spending so that our breakeven point of $70,000 a month in sales has fallen to $49,000. Now when we have a 70k month or higher our profits are much better than they ever were before. The business is morphing to fit the climate.