Waynes Word ~ June- July2 009

Waynesword for June, into July, 2009

Ahhh, June! This is when the deep greenery reaches
maximum intensity up here, after the blooms of May… now comes the season of proms, school field trips, final exams, graduations, and parties…
AAU hoop tournaments, NBA playoff finals, college visits, lawn mowing, gardening, and travel in all directions for work. A hectic time but a joyous time—no occasion for remorse or sad contemplation…. The Dave Matthews Band is back at SPAC for their perennial summer-kick-off visit,
and this is guaranteed reason for ecstatic appreciation, exhilaration! This year’s bonus is a premiere appearance of a favorite up-&-coming group,
The Hold Steady… when I hear the soaring guitar riffs of “Reconstructive
Summer” I swear I’ll feel full rejuvenated after a distant, dismal winter.
But it’s Dave and his band that will enthrall 50,000 or more over 2 nights.
(Look for my review of the June 12th concert in the Music section soon.)
The other perennial event at SPAC coming up at the end of the month is
The Freihofer’s Jazz Festival, a wonderful 2-day marathon with over 20 hours of great music, food, and camaraderie.

All of a Saratoga Summer—or a Lake George summer, or a Sacandaga summer—lies ahead at this point, so I hope you feel as positive as I do about the impending turnaround…. enjoy it!

WHAT DO YOU “MAKE” IN A DAY?

In late May I was reading one of those on-line blogs where everyone was pointing out the sad state of American manufacturing, now that GM was going under. Many blog entries were written about
the “fact” that America doesn’t really “make anything anymore” which is a widely dispersed falsehood, I think, and soon after that MSN published a piece about 10 Great Companies that still manufacture products in this country (Boeing, Caterpillar, John Deere, GE Steam Turbines, and Anderson Boats from Cincinnati were among those mentioned…).

Meanwhile, a friend had sent me a link to a piece Michael Moore had written from Flint, Michigan which detailed all the things that re-tooled GM Plants COULD be making, which America needs: trains and passenger cars for light rail systems, cleaner busses, solar panels of all sorts (which I used to sell in the mid-1980’s, when incentives for their purchase were briefly in place), hybrid vehicles, et cetera. He maintains that the changeover is not impossible at all—that it would be similar to the rapid transformation and re-tooling that took place as America entered World War II in the early ‘forties, which was highly successful at stimulating the industrial base, as well as aiding in
eventual victory on the military front in Europe and Asia. Will we have the same resolve and commitment to make those massive changes
in a new drive toward re-establishing energy independence? I hope that
we will, for my children’s generation, and those “down the road.”

There is now some excitement of a different kind building in
Upstate’s Capital District and Saratoga County in particular, with the
official land purchase of the site where GlobalFoundries will soon be breaking ground on their new $ 4.2 Billion dollar chip construction facility, which I’ve read will become the largest single commercial construction project in America once it gets underway. After years of discussion and build-up and political maneuvering, groundbreaking on the 1.2 million square foot first phase is due to occur now this summer.
So certainly, by 2012 or so, Saratoga County will be known as a hub for a re-birth of chip manufacturing in this country, as well as for its cutting edge research and development in the field of Nanotechnology.

But on behalf of all the currently thriving manufacturing facilities already in existence here in Saratoga County and the Capital District of New York, I would point out that GlobalFoundries will not be moving into a void—some of the products being Made everyday in our area now are:

                           *Paper and Paper Products
                           *Specialty Felt for Printing Presses
                           *Turbines & Turbine Parts
                           *Cement & Concrete Products
                           *Custom Car Mats
                           *Catheters & Medical Devices
                           *Lumber & Logging Products
                           *Milk & Dairy Products
                           *Produce, Food, Farm Products
                           *Custom Home Construction
                           *Modular Home Production
                           *Solar Panels & Solar Products
                           *Fuel Cells
                           *Batteries for Hybrid Cars
                           *Adhesive & Silicon Products
                           *Steel & Steel Products
                           *Textiles, T-shirts, Clothing
                           *High-end Bicycles
                           *Chemicals for Industry

…and so forth… I’m sure I’ve forgotten some others. The point I’m Making is: it does no good to disparage our area or culture at large by saying: “We don’t Make anything in this country anymore…” It’s not true, and it’s a damaging concept. The people who offer up such cynical commentary are the ones who are NOT feeling productive themselves, perhaps unemployed or underemployed.
They are perhaps bitter about layoffs or job cutbacks but those things are all about change and evolution and some people don’t really WANT
to change or evolve, or feel they can’t. Don’t take their critiques to heart—the Great Depression may live within their own souls, but I don’t see it on a grand scale in 2009 yet, not where I live.

ON A PERSONAL LEVEL: WHAT DO YOU MAKE IN A DAY?

We are all trying to “Make Money” of course, but what else do we Make?

I for one Make Breakfast for my 3 kids, my wife, and any house guests on a given day—it’s one of my specialties. Omelettes, any kind of eggs, breakfast meats, fried potatoes, pancakes, waffles, French toast, English muffins, toasted bran, oatmeal, huevos rancheros, you name it, I can Make it. A good Breakfast Makes everyone’s day more fortified, more secure.

I try to Make People laugh, at least on my good days. One wag has noted that we have become a nation whose leading export is
Entertainment—movies, music, books, recordings, HBO specials, TV shows, etc.—so any contribution in that regard adds to our natural resource— Humor is something we could all choose to contribute more of… every phone call, meeting, or personal interaction can be made more pleasant by Making someone laugh. It can deflect road rage, undermine gossip, ease chance meetings, and lubricate business tension. It Makes the Mundane less cumbersome, and follows the poet’s dictum to “Make it New, each time.”

In Real Estate, what are we trying to Make? We are Making Connections with people that lead to successful transactions, hopefully. We attempt to Make Matches between clients and property they are trying to find. Ultimately, we are trying to Make Purchase Offers into Contracts, which then lead to new people owning property, which will help stimulate the overall economy. One blogger I read recently railed against sales people of all kinds—saying we “didn’t Make anything”—we were just trying to make money off what other people had manufactured or created. Not true, in my book—“Making the Sale” is what Makes the World go ‘round. Cars, trucks, homes, commercial buildings, commodities of any kind need to be sold to complete the cycle from “Maker” to “Consumer”—so let’s not leave out
or denigrate the final part of the sequence, which Makes the economy tick.

As a Writer, I try to Make words Make sense and stick to paper, with the hope of Making someone else nod in approval, laugh, or be provoked somehow. I try to Make tangible the abstract thoughts that have run through my head since Day One.

Teachers Make students smarter, more aware of their world. The results are good marks and later, confidence. Truckers Make food and manufactured goods, propane and oil and lumber and drain pipes available with their deliveries over huge distances. State DOT guys Make roads and bridges better. Chefs and short-order cooks Make food for everyone who wants it. Garbage men Make our waste and recycling disappear from our homes. Secretaries and Paralegals and Administrative Assistants Make the rest of our work lives easier. The point is, a lot of people contribute to the process of life without working at a manufacturing plant—all of the population that works in the service industry or the civil servants or the patrol men or firefighters, military personnel, or water plant operators, retail workers or doctors and nurses and therapists of all sorts, chambermaids or desk clerks—everyone employed serves a purpose and Makes our lives functional.

So next time someone mutters or blurts out that “We don’t MAKE anything in America anymore,” just tell them that’s jive, NOT true, as anyone putting out any effort at all is trying to MAKE things
better.

That’s it for now—will write you again in mid-July…

Traditional Monthly P.S.—

Check the Music page for new stuff soon in June, and the Hoop Page too, and then the Saratoga Page just before the Racetrack People come to Town… And Thank You for reading my website.

Thursday, June 18, 2009