On The Road

I come to you this evening from the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Chicago. Yes, it's a tough life.

I am having dinner tonight with a new vice president and will be in meetings here tomorrow.

Then it's off on some other adventure.

Life is good ... if you can deal with O'Hare.

A Few Doors Down From Nowhere

Work brings me to Statesville, NC this evening. If you value your life, if you hold the lives of your children and your children's children dear, you'll never set foot in this town.

Although the Hardee's that, out of necessity, served as supper wasn't bad.

Five Guys Burgers

John over at Commonwealth Conservative swoons as a result of a visit to Five Guys. I wandered into one of their burger outlets up in Springfield a while back because I had heard how good the food was there. I too found the burgers to be disgustingly great.

The unsettling aspect to my visit was in the fact that the restaurant was full of grossly overweight patrons and me (a reasonably svelte 185 at the time). I fear a direct correlation exists between the massive burgers served up by the five guys and the massive girth achieved by Five Guys aficionados.

I became haunted by the implications.

Now I'm approaching 300* and can no longer squeeze into my Speedos. I'm not sure but I believe my problems all began that terrible night that I pigged out on thick, juicy, greasy, delicious Five Guys hamburgers.

* Just kidding. I was at 186 this morning, a condition I attribute to beer consumption yesterday.

Talk About Productivity ...

Yesterday was a busy day for me in the office. I was on the phone the better part of the day setting plans for the coming year. I noticed toward the end of the day that, in the course of sending and receiving email messages, spreadsheets, .jpg's, etc, I had transferred 40 megs of data*. In a matter of 10 hours. A routine day.

I think back just ten years when we relied on the US Postal Service for communication with customers and with the organization's branch offices. My God. How did we survive as a nation?

* My first computer was a Commodor 64. It had a storage capacity of 64 kilobytes or 0.064 megs ...

On The Road

It is a rare day that I declare a Chinese restaurant to be substandard but tonight I have to pass on a negative assessment regarding a place in Bethlehem, PA. It was really bad. You may want to avoid Pennsylvania until further notice. This is so disappointing. I mean, how do you screw up Chinese?

Anyway, I find myself here in the cradle of civilization (Get it? Bethlehem? Oh, never mind) this evening, with meetings scheduled in Easton tomorrow and more meetings on tap for Friday in Thomasville (near York).

Ah, the life of a gypsy. Who wishes he hadn't ordered the sweet and sour chicken.

I Can't Find a Signal!!!!!!!

I pulled into Harlan, Kentucky yesterday afternoon and immediately walked into the Cingular store on the town's main street. I hadn't been able to get a signal on my phone for an hour and a half and, in my business, that's a bad thing.

I walked up to the woman at the counter, holding my cellphone - I have Cingular (AT&T Wireless) cellular service - and asked, "Can you get a signal here?" I thought there must be a secret to getting service if there was a store selling it deep in the mountains.

The woman looked at me and replied, "No."

A cell phone store where you can't get a cellular signal. I felt like passing on to her some of my marketing experience. "Don't try selling ice cubes in Iceland or sand in the Sahara."

Or cell phones where there is no service.

But I was in a hurry.

"So where do I have to go to make a call?"

"Go back to the lat (that's light to those of you who don't speak mountain) and turn left. You should git a signal when you git to the Pizza Hut. But some days are better 'n others."

Darned if she wasn't right.

I made my calls. I picked up my accumulating voicemails. I sat in the car sweating like crazy.

But I got a signal! In Harlan, Kentucky!

I bring this up for a reason. Tom Friedman, writing a column for the New York Times, wants our politicians to do something about the problem - but for those like him who live in the big city.

Calling All Luddites
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

I've been thinking of running for high office on a one-issue platform: I promise, if elected, that within four years America will have cellphone service as good as Ghana's. If re-elected, I promise that in eight years America will have cellphone service as good as Japan's, provided Japan agrees not to forge ahead on wireless technology. My campaign bumper sticker: "Can You Hear Me Now?"

I began thinking about this after watching the Japanese use cellphones and laptops to get on the Internet from speeding bullet trains and subways deep underground. But the last straw was when I couldn't get cellphone service while visiting I.B.M.'s headquarters in Armonk, N.Y.  

He goes on to say Congress should fix the problem.

I'll not hold my breath.

Ode To Babes

I try my best to do what's right,
To take no prisoners; to join the fight.
.
It's when I gaze upon these pics
I know to side with right-wing chicks.
.
And then there're those
who'd stop a clock.
.

Who look like they

crawled from a rock.

.

There is a message in this post

to those who wish to join the host.

.

I think that I'd prefer to be

a member of the GOP.

Click on image to enlarge.

I Battle a Snake

Because of recent heavy rains, our gravel driveway had taken a bit of a beating in terms of erosion (we live on a spur of Big Walker Mountain and our drive curves about 300 yards up a hill; with a downpour, we can get a good bit of runoff from the hillside) so I decided to hitch my grader blade to my tractor and level the driveway.

I find myself having to do this three or four times a year. It takes me about two hours and it ain't no big thang, as we say.

Because I don't use the blade much this time of year (I get lots of use out of it plowing snow later on), I keep it under a tarp out behind the fenced pasture.

One thing a person learns around here is that, in the summertime there is a snake lurking under every rock, behind every tree, in the rafters of every outbuilding.

So when I got to it, I intentionally lifted the tarp away from the grader blade carefully.

Sure enough, there were two huge black racers curled up beneath the tarp, all intertwined and not particularly pleased that I had disturbed them.

What was odd about the encounter was that the snakes, once disturbed, didn't slither off into the weeds. They untangled but circled the blade as if both of them were going to challenge me.

Under normal circumstances, I'd give the snakes their space. But on this day I needed my farm implement. They were, therefore, occupying my space.

As I backed the tractor up to the blade - to connect it to the three-point hitch and to scare off the pesky not-so-little reptiles - sure enough, one finally moved off into the tall grass.

The other one, though, wasn't going anywhere. He coiled up beneath the blade and signaled, "Come on, big daddy. Let's see what you got."

Hmm.

My thought was, "Look, you little reptile, go have your snake sex under someone else's tarp. I've got work to do."

So, with a good deal of effort and cajoling, I finally got the black snake to see things my way; he slithered away, obviously not happy with me.

I hitched up the blade and started heading off across the pasture toward the driveway. As I rode along, I began to think about the encounter. I'm no snake expert but it seemed the two that I had come upon had acted rather strangely. I thought it odd that they would be so aggressive, particularly the one that would not back off when confronted. Showing off in front of his mate is a commendable exercise - heck, I used to do it for Paula myself ... a few years ago.

But this was different.

Then an idea came to me. Perhaps I hadn't interrupted snake sex. It might be that I had unknowingly busted up a family. The two snakes might have been raising babies. That would certainly explain the aggression.

But I hadn't seen any babies when I lifted the tarp off the blade, and the blade is nothing more than a five-foot long steel ... well, blade.

Except ...

I brought the tractor to a stop, put it in neutral, and jumped off. I walked around to the back, knelt down, and attempted to peer into the space that existed behind the blade itself and a support beam that ran its length.

It was too dark in the confined space to see anything. So I walked around to the other side of the implement and stuck my eye up to the narrow opening. And looked inside.

Something was looking back.

I knew immediately that it had to be a snake; the cause for the parent snakes to be agitated. I knew too that I was going to use that blade - on my driveway - that day.

The snake had to go.

But how was I going to get him / her /it out?

I decided to drive the tractor up to my garage and to prod the little tyke out of its lair.

As I headed up the driveway, I looked back, only to see a snake head and about twelve inches of snake body dangling below the blade. He was attempting his escape. Which didn't upset me at all.

He slowly worked his way out of the blade and plopped down on the driveway. All three feet of him. The cutest youngster a mommy and daddy snake had ever produced. He lay there for a few moments, got his bearings, and then slid off into the grass.

And my day progressed.

Another day on Snake Mountain.

A Great Night For Baseball

The Salem Avalanche (a AAA league) crushed the Frederick Keys 6-2 last night. The weather turned out, after threatening rain, to have been perfect for the game.

We were particularly glad to see the Av's crush the Keys because ... well, because the Keys had the gall to show up on our diamond. On our home turf. In our house. You do that, you should expect a good thrashing.

Attendance at the game was just over 5,500; not bad for a Carolina League game.

A band played on the lawn outside the stadium after the game. Little Kaid and Jayla danced the night away to "Cheeseburger in Paradise."

It doesn't get any better.

Blood Flows on the Fuhrman Farm

Paula and I have had a tough time this summer with black snakes eating barn swallow babies. (I know there are men and women in uniform dying in Iraq, but I'll concentrate on them after we finish picking up tiny feathers and body parts).

I took a picture once of a black racer that had to have been six feet long slithering across the pasture and posted it to this weblog. We grow them really big on the farm. Well, they are quite common around here and one (or more) is (are) raiding the swallow nests when the four, five or six fuzzy little birdie heads are just starting to appear over the rim of the dried mud nests. One day they're all there; the next day, they're all gone.

And they ain't flying away.

I thought for a while that it was a barn owl coming in at night but signs are pointing more toward snakes.

We have had about fifteen nests of swallows this summer, all high up in the rafters of our barn (there are three active nests right now even this late in the summer) and few of them have seen chicks grow to adulthood.

Paula would probably prefer that I shoot the snake but I won't. Such is the way of nature.

But I will strangle the little bastard if I can catch him in there late at night.

Such is my nature.

Time To Hang It Up?

I've often told family and friends that I plan on never retiring. I'll work till I drop.

But a sign from God might change my mind.

Here's a bit of news about M. Arthur Anderson's tap on the shoulder in the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Motorist aide struck by car on I-64 

By Mark Bowes, Times-Dispatch staff writer

M. Arthur Anderson and his family are probably counting their blessings.

The 73-year-old state police motorist assistance aide was struck by a car going about 40 mph on Interstate 64 near Staples Mill Road yesterday. He survived, suffering a broken leg and head injuries.

That's even more remarkable when you consider Anderson is still recovering from open-heart surgery. 

MEMO

From: GOD

To: Art

I thought the blocked arteries would have been enough of a signal. It is time to kick back and take in your daily dose of The Price Is Right, dude. Your days of bouncing off of cars and running that six minute mile are over.

Fond Memories

I never met Kim Woo-choong. But I feel like I know him well. That's why this brings back a flood of memories.

Founder of Collapsed South Korean Conglomerate Daewoo Hospitalized 

The Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - The former chairman of collapsed South Korean conglomerate Daewoo Group was hospitalized with a life-threatening heart ailment Friday, casting a shadow over a multi-billion dollar fraud investigation.

Kim Woo-choong was admitted to Seoul's Severance Hospital in (sic) was in serious condition, said hospital spokeswoman Park Doo-hyuk. 

I had the good fortune of working side-by-side for a few years with executives at the now-defunct Daewoo Automotive Group (Daewoo U.S.), before the parent company collapsed under the weight of its staggering debt.

(Interestingly, this article throws out a debt figure of $70 billion. When I was travelling regularly to Compton, CA to meet with my Daewoo counterparts in 1998 and 1999, I remember reading, in the Wall Street Journal, articles that pegged Daewoo Group's debt at $20 billion. Then $30 billion. The last report I read estimated the company's debt at $50 billion. With the profligate spending that I was witness to, I knew the ever-accelerating race to insolvency was a fast-approaching matter of time.)

Despite the regret that I still feel for those who were thrown out of work by the company's collapse, I have nothing but fond memories of my Daewoo experience. And of those with whom I worked.

What was particularly interesting about Kim Woo-choong and the many executives that would show up in Compton for routine updates on the progress of their company's U.S. entry into the highly competitive sub-compact car market, was the extraordinary deference that was paid these people. I could use the word godlike (OK, apostlelike) in describing the way they were viewed by the employees and it would not be too much of an exaggeration.

When a corporate executive came near, everyone around me bowed (No. I didn't. I bow only to my wife.). There was only fleeting eye contact on the part of those I was with, especially if an executive chose to speak directly to one of them. It wasn't out of fear so much as a profound respect for the position that executive held within the company.

And the stories about Kim Woo-choong were legion. His work ethic. His wrath. His power. Many of the stories were recounted to me over dinner or mixed drinks in bars and restaurants in Torrance, Redondo Beach, Palos Verdes, and aboard the Queen Mary down in Long Beach Harbor. Stories related in hushed tones almost. With an occasional sideways glance that ensured the storyteller that Kim Woo-choong wouldn't find out that he was the topic of casual conversation.

I remember too that every Korean working at Daewoo smoked cigarettes. Every one. Non-stop. Which was understandable, considering the fact that employees there had no life. An 80 hour workweek was the norm (oddly, workers at their headquarters were expected to be there at all hours but it wasn't unusual to walk past someone's office and see the occupant sleeping).

I took all this in with a great deal of fascination. I had, at the time, a number of opportunities to fly to Seoul to inspect facilities there but I never set aside the time (and I hear they serve dog in restaurants there; the un-hot kind; I can't say for sure). In any case, I wish now I had taken that time.

So, I hope Mr. Kim gets well soon. I hope too that all those wonderful friends I got to know at Daewoo U.S. have prospered.

And have given up their god-awful Korean cigarettes.

Eyewitness to Carnage

In Detroit, they're called "gawkers," in Chicago, "gapers." Those are the drivers who cause traffic jams by slowing down at the scene of an accident in order to get a glimpse of catastrophe. The worse the accident is, the slower they drive.

On Thursday, I was one of them, whatever we're called. I found myself slowing to a crawl on eastbound Rte. 58 west of Martinsville in order to avoid debris (and a state trooper) and to take in the sight of this horrific accident.

Collision kills Danville man
A Danville man was killed Thursday in an accident on U.S. 58 in Axton, according to State Trooper E.J. O'Connell.

Emory Midget Thomas, 69, of 115 Ash St., Danville, was driving a 2003 Suzuki Burgman motorcycle west on U.S. 58 when the accident occurred at 12:26 p.m., O'Connell said.

Thomas was driving in the right lane headed toward Ray Lambert Auction Co., O'Connell said. Witnesses said Thomas was interested in looking at lawn equipment at the auction house, the trooper said.

He apparently missed his turn and attempted to make a U-turn in the crossover about a mile east of the U.S. 58 bypass when the accident occurred, O'Connell said.

The motorcycle collided with a 1995 Dodge Neon traveling in the left lane, he said. 

Collided. There must be a verb that better describes the encounter when a car traveling at a high rate of speed makes contact with a motorcycle that is crossing broadside in its path. The report provided above is actually rather antiseptic - probably in deference to the victim's relatives - compared to what I saw. A crushed motorcycle with parts scattered across the highway. A small red compact car with both its windshield and the front of its roof caved in, the cause of the damage to both being obvious. By the time I got to the scene, the injured - and dying - had been removed and taken to the hospital but, when I gazed on the extent of the damage, I knew someone's life had come to an abrupt end. That day. Near Axton. On State Route 58. Moments before I drove by. It was a haunting experience.

If you've never been involved in an accident while riding a motorcycle, you can't truly relate to this experience. You probably have a reasonable understanding of that which can happen. The vulnerability. The lack of protection. Blood. Injury. Worse.

But you don't know the pain. The trauma. In my case, the inability to breathe. I described it afterwards as feeling like I'd broken my lungs. They didn't seem to function. The overwhelming distress from the many broken bones did reasonably mask the dysfunctional breathing apparatus but both seemed to contribute to a feeling of profound shock, as I tried to ascertain just what harm I'd inflicted on myself, without being able to fully grasp that which was happening. The notions that interrupt the thought process contribute to the shock: Can I walk? Am I dying?

In my case, on a beautiful summer day, riding a sleek, handsome Yamaha 650 Special, I steered straight when I should have turned. Doing about 25 mph, I slammed into the side of a brick house. For years I blamed the accident on a throttle that stuck (in order to avoid accusations that I had no hair on my chest; a man-thing) but aficionados saw right through that excuse and knew without hesitation that I'd simply lost control of the bike.

The valuable lessons learned from that accident are four: (1) The human body is extremely fragile. (2) A motorcycle affords no protection in a collision with a stationary object. (3) The extent of the damage done to the body is in direct proportion to one's rate of speed and the physical nature of the object met. (4) The catastrophic damage that is inflicted never completely heals.

So, when I passed that accident over near Axton, it brought back memories. Ugly memories. And I immediately knew that someone's life had been forever altered.

It's odd. The thought came and went that perhaps the rider was only permanently disfigured; his bones rearranged. As if that were a good scenario. I knew from my experience that that was the best that he could expect. I also knew, though, after seeing the depression left in the roof of that car, that the motorcyclist was not injured.

His luck had run out on Thursday, June 23, 2005.

As for me, after spending what had to be 15 seconds gawking at the accident, I drove on. I had work to do.

Kaid Finds a Rattlesnake

Three-year-old Kaid Fuhrman was out tooling around the yard in his battery-operated automobile the other day when he happened upon a snake. And not just any snake. It was a rattlesnake, or to the aficionado of such stuff, an Eastern Timber Rattlesnake. Three feet long and in a foul mood was the way it was described to me.

What makes the story charming (can a story about a venomous snake be charming?) is that little Kaid, who's still working on developing a broad vocabulary, jumped off his ride and came running into the house (my son lives up in Roanoke County) screaming, "Rattlesnake! There's a rattlesnake in the yard!"

My son, as it turns out, had warned Kaid and Kaid's twin sister about bad snakes, one of which - the biggest, baddest of which - is the rattlesnake and warned them to never go near them. Nobody's sure how Kaid was able to recognize the breed but, sure enough, when my son and daughter-in-law went out to inspect Kaid's find, there lay, at the side of their house, a chubby little rattlesnake.

After the initial shock wore off, my son retrieved a garbage can, scooped the surly monster inside, drove down the road, and released it into a creekbed.

Before you ask, "Why didn't he shoot the snake?" understand that that is not how we do things in modern America. We love all God's creatures; even those that choose to kill us and eat us.

Anyway, we're all proud of little Kaid. Most adults wouldn't be able to recognize a rattlesnake when they came upon one. But then most people don't live in Rattlesnake Central either.

Today's Wisdom

Stress Management

A lecturer, when explaining stress management to an audience, raised a glass of water and asked, "how heavy is this glass of water?" Answers called out ranged from 20 grams to 500 grams.

The lecturer replied, "The absolute weight doesn't matter. It depends on how long you try to hold it. If I hold it for a minute, that's not a problem. If I hold it for an hour, I'll have an ache in my right arm. If I hold it for a day, you'll have to call an ambulance. In each case, it's the same weight, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it becomes."

He continued, "And that's the way it is with stress management. If we carry our burdens all the time, sooner or later, as the burden becomes increasingly heavy, we won't be able to carry on. As with the glass of water, you have to put it down for a while and rest before holding it again. When we're refreshed, we can carry on with the burden."

So, before you return home tonight, put the burden of work down. Don't carry it home. You can pick it up tomorrow. Whatever burdens you're carrying now, let them down for a moment if you can. Relax; pick them up later after you've rested. Life is short Enjoy it!

I was forced to terminate an employee years ago for having reported to work drunk. It was not his worst offense, but it was his last. When I sat him down to break the news to him, I said:

"John, I swore when I took this job that I'd never take a problem to bed with me at night. It was, and is, my intention to deal with problems swiftly and to move on. John, you and I have been to bed together too many times. You're fired."

The company I worked for profited from my having pulled the trigger.

Stress is often caused by allowing problems to fester and problem employees to accumulate.

Want to control work-related stress? Deal with your problems. Once. Swiftly. Move on.

Men Walk On The Moon

For you history buffs out there, I thought I'd let you take a look at this. It is a copy (the entire newspaper; not just the front page) of the Saigon Post dated Tuesday, July 22, 1969. My brother, Steve, was serving in Vietnam at the time and bought it on the streets of Saigon because it chronicled the historical significance of the day. He sent it home and it has been in my possession ever since.

To me, it has enormous historical value because:

(1) It was printed the day the first human being in history (Neil Armstrong) ever set foot on the moon.

(2) The Saigon Post no longer exists.

(3) Saigon no longer exists.

(4) South Vietnam no longer exists.

It is very cool. 

Marketing 101

Now I enjoy staring at women's breasts as much as anyone. And Pamela Anderson Lee has her share (I count at least three in this photo). But I want to know who the genius was who paid good money to put up a billboard showing Pamela's boobs (oxymoron alert) in the wilds of Northern West Virginia.

I was on my way toward Pennsylvania yesterday morning on I-77 when I passed this PETA billboard (denouncing cruelty toward chickens) somewhere around Burnsville, West Virginia. I can only assume, since the traffic count there is rather meager, that the marketing gurus at PETA were targeting some poultry processing plant workers in the area. Like Pamela Anderson Lee's mammaries are going to influence their career decision-making.

Now I have more marketing training than a grown man should ever have. But sometimes it comes in handy. As in this case.

Memo to PETA and its marketing firm: Know your target audience. West, by God, Virginians still believe in the literal Bible. You won't find many citizens there showing up at work with their (fake) boobs exploding from their tight-fitting knit tops. Truth be known, most God-fearing women in the area find photos like that plastered on your billboard to be pornographic.

Whether you find their attitudes toward nakedness to be quaint, outlandish, silly, or disgustingly Christian, they are the people you are trying to sway, you morons. Where on earth were your brains when you devised this marketing gem? What were you thinking?

Oh. Wait a minute. I took another look at the billboard. I know exactly what you were thinking about. You devils.

Family, The Anti-drug

Today's lesson: Want to teach your children right from wrong? Good from evil? Want to keep them away from drugs? To lead a good life? To stay out of prison? To raise a loving family of their own?

Start early. Take 'em fishin'.

Meet the love of my life. Jayla, 37 months but preparing for her doctoral dissertation, went fishing with me Sunday. For the first time in her life.

My daughter captured the rare moment with her camera when the line was actually in the water. Jayla was obsessed with the thought that a fish had stolen our worm and chose to frequently reel in the line. And I could tell there wasn't nearly as much excitement for her sitting motionless, waiting for a fish to bite, as there was in playing with the slimy, wiggly, fascinating ... worm.

She would cast the line out, and everyone would duck or take cover, sit on my lap for - on average - fifteen seconds, and turn to me and say, "I think a fish got the worm, Gramps." So she'd reel the confused worm in for the umpteenth time, give it a quick inspection, and fling him out into the lake again.

Pictured are Princess Jayla, Kaid, and Chase, being coached by my son, son-in law, and me. A family's bond being passed down from one generation to the next. And the next.

Rate of success? It's never failed.

Click on image to enlarge.

Come Buy Our Pots

When I was young, one of the vacation excursions that seemed to be in the plans of all European-American adults was to travel out west. There they would stay in flea-infested hotels with broken air conditioning, take a picture of a cactus, pretend to enjoy the frijoles, and sweat profusely in the hot sun. And they would make the obligatory journey to Window Rock, Arizona to buy a genuine Navajo rug from an honest-to-God Navajo princess.

As a young and relatively stupid youth, the thought never crossed my mind that it might have been a good idea for one of the thousands of visitors who stopped by the dingy, dilapidated shack the princess was working out of to offer her valuable advice: Move to Phoenix. Get a decent job cleaning rooms at the Holiday Inn. They have a healthcare plan. And you can get away from this hellhole.

Fast-forward to 2005. No, wait. Step back in time to Southwest Virginia.

Here we are developing plans to lure elderly European-Americans with disposable income to come here to buy our pots. Beads. For all I know, genuine Navajo rugs.

Southwest Virginia sets sights on arts
Towns hope to draw artists to the area and in turn boost tourism 

BY Rex Bowman, Richmond Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

FLOYD -- Already making big strides in promoting eco-tourism and music-based tourism, communities in Southwest Virginia are now turning their sights on "heritage tourism," looking to find ways to bolster Appalachian craftspeople and their products.

Specifically, officials hope to emulate the success of North Carolina's Hand Made in America, a coalition of artists, craftspeople and civic leaders that in the past decade has turned the making of hand-crafted products into a booming sector of the economy and lured tourists into the western part of the Tar Heel State.

In Virginia this month, a group called the Southwest Virginia Artisans Network formed to help craftspeople learn business and marketing skills and to showcase their works. The group, funded by $195,000 from the General Assembly, plans to pattern its approach after Virginia's Crooked Road -- a year-old 250-mile trail linking and promoting musical landmarks and venues from Clintwood to Floyd and Ferrum. The road immediately boosted tourism in Southwest Virginia, according to local tourism officials. 

A lesson I learned in graduate school (and from the woman selling rugs in Window Rock) is that when you have nothing else going for you, try selling crap to tourists. 

This week in Floyd County, already known for its vibrant arts and crafts community [as well as average annual income per wage earner of $17,023, average home values $45000 below the state average, and with 11.7% of the population living below the poverty line], local officials played host to HandMade in America's Craft Advisory Council, which brought craftspeople from Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia together at the Chateau Morrisette winery.

But did they spend any money in Floyd while they were there? Probably not. How could they? There aren't any real businesses there anymore. Unless you include the pottery shops run by the dope-smoking artsy craftsy ménage that have migrated there to sell their worthless trash to those seven unsuspecting tourists that pass through the area each day.

Participants discussed ways of encouraging the crafts as a tourism attraction and economic engine.

They also discussed ways of making genuine Navajo rugs out of the polyester / acrylic blended ones imported from Singapore that you can buy over at the Wal-Mart.

Look. If you enjoy sipping the latest fruit of the vine and listening to transplants from Buffalo strumming their mandolins, more power to you. Floyd County should be your vacation destination.

But for all the folks in Southwest Virginia who are seeking gainful employment, and a better future for their children, selling beads on the side of the road isn't going to work. They need employers who will pay a decent wage for a day's work. They need healthcare benefits for their family. And a dental plan, if I'm making a wishlist. Here's the problem:

The numerous Appalachian residents [sure they are] who sculpt, paint, turn pottery and make baskets, brooms, fiddles, quilts, leatherworks and sundry other products constitute an "invisible factory," helping to replace disappearing manufacturing and textile jobs, according to proponents of the crafts movement.

Making "baskets, brooms, fiddles, quilts, leatherworks and sundry other products" is going to replace manufacturing jobs.

We're doomed. For those who have stuck it out this long, call U-haul first thing Monday morning. I hear they're hiring up in Duluth.

For those of you who plan on sticking it out, do what I'm doing. I've gotten myself a wig from the Wal-Mart, bought some mocassins and this fashionable leather dress (that accentuates my fake bust) from a hippy over in Floyd County, and I'm learning to weave genuine Navajo rugs.

You can call me Princess Havpityonme, genuine Navajo native, from now on. I'm riding the wave to success, baby.

A Southern Lament

Sometimes you can drift far enough off the main highways of America to suddenly find yourself in a different time, confronting a different reality. This morning I was driving near enough to Mt. Airy, North Carolina (made famous by the Andy Griffith Show) that I was able to pick up a classic country music station on the radio.

Now in the big city, where country music is enjoying broad popularity, classic country - the old stuff - includes the likes of Garth Brooks and Charley Daniels. To most country music fans today, anyone older than Kenny Chesney is from the distant past.

But the past around these parts has a much longer memory. This particular radio station was playing rural music in its classical sense. Ballads. Gospel. Folk music. Classical bluegrass as only mountain musicians can perform it. The kind of music that takes your mind off of the day's trials and tribulations.

There was one recording in particular that captured my attention this morning. It was a ballad originally sung in the 1940's by someone whose name I didn't catch. It was a song about a young native southerner lost in a war fought many decades before. It was of interest to me because, even though the Civil War ended 140 years ago, the playing of this particular recording reminded me that the war's toll and aftermath are still being dealt with by the people in Carroll County, Patrick County, and Smyth County, Virginia, Goldsboro, High Point, and Pilot Mountain, North Carolina. And Mt. Airy.

The disappearance of so many young men from every town and village across the south is still a wound that hasn't completely healed.

People in the mountains, even today, take time out - a brief moment - to mourn the loss of a generation of kinfolk. Some think of grandfathers and great grandfathers they never knew. Others their great-uncles who went off to war and were last seen moving forward, face toward the enemy, weapon in hand, on the field of Shiloh, Tennessee on a beautiful Spring day in 1862 ... and were never heard from or seen again. Vanished, like so many thousands of other young southerners in the day. At Fredericksburg and Manassas. Gettysburg and Cold Harbor. Petersburg and Slaughter Mountain. Not a word ever made its way back to let relatives know of their fate. They simply, cruelly, vanished from the face of the earth. Forever.

Even today, tens of thousands of the south's finest and most promising young men who disappeared in the years 1861 to 1865 are unaccounted for. No gravestone marks their last resting place, save for plaques in cemeteries in such faraway places as Perryville, Kentucky and Pittsburgh Landing, Tennessee that read, "Here lie the mortal remains of 300 Confederate dead." Nothing more.

If there is the occasional feeling of remorse coming out of the mountains of Virginia and North Carolina after these many years, imagine what the all-consuming sense of loss must have been in those years when the war was still raging, as well as in the many years that followed. It didn't simply involve individual families who were touched by tragedy. Entire communities were devastated by the tragic losses. So many young men.

I was able to find the lyrics to the ballad I heard on the radio. Here they are, for your edification.

Rebel Soldier

In a dreary Yankee prison

Where a Rebel soldier lay

By his side there stood a preacher

Ere his soul should pass away

And he faintly whispered Parson

As he clutched him by the hand

Oh parson tell me quickly

Will my soul pass through the southland?

Will my soul pass through the southland?
To my old Virginia Grand
Will I see the hills of Georgia?
And the green fields of Alabam'
Will I see that little church house
Where I placed my heart in hand?
Oh parson tell me quickly
Will my soul pass through the southland?

Was for lovin' dear ol' Dixie
In this dreary cell I lie
Was for lovin' dear ol' Dixie
In this northern state I'll die
Will you see my little daughter?
Will you make her understand?
Oh parson tell me quickly
Will my soul pass through the southland?