Skip to main content

Posts

Is Maine's Industrial Partnerships Act based on the Scandinavian Model?

Camoin Associates used Esri data compilation softwar e to produce a master plan for the Boothbay Peninsula .The software allows one to run reports for a designated radius of any address  I tried it out for our business, but found hat it doesn't have data relevant to our field. One report. called "tapestries" categorizes demographic segments, but if you believed their segments to reflect reality, the only thing people buy in today's world are electronics. The truth is more likely that the electronics market is the only data compiled. I soon became bored with reading the homogenized descriptions of different classes of people. I have heard it said that recorded history is selective, limited by the stories historians elect to tell while true history encompasses the whole spectrum of generational cultural interactions. The Camoin Report was created by running reports with the Esri data compiler and that is its limitation. Neither the Esri data, nor the Camoin Repo

Maine's Industrial Partnership Bill - Where Does it Lead?

The season for electing town selectmen is underway locally. I live in Boothbay but since a public private economic development group (JECD) has been implemented on the peninsula which finances itself by taxing both municipalities, it is fair game to ask questions of candidates for Boothbay Harbor selectmen announcing their candidacy in letters to the editor of the Boothbay Register. I started writing this blog back around 2007 because I observed that in the Maine media, economic development policy is reported propaganda style, one point of view presented, almost exclusively of all others. This media policy extends to major politically transformational economic development acts of legislation, or better said, the failure to publish stories and information before and after such acts are passed. The Industrial Partnerships Act of 2013 , is an arguably totalitarian measure which threatens to solidify the central management of everything in Maine by the public-private state. Shortly aft

Carl F Horowitz, Merges False Equivalencies with Authentic Insights.

I was recently engaged in an online conversation in which an article titled The Corporate Alliance with Political Radicalism: A Great Deal of Ruin in a Nation by Carl F Horowitz was brought up with the following quotation: Why are so many corporations, especially those that provide information technology, promoting political radicalism? A growing number of people, at least on the Right, must be wondering about all this, especially as the business community continues to line up in solidarity against President Donald Trump. For it hardly can be denied that the corporation, partly out of self-interest and partly out of conviction, is becoming an adjunct of the hard Left. And equally to the point, the hard Left is becoming an adjunct of corporations. This alliance is anything but benign. In the long run, it even may jeopardize the existence of the United States.  I had no idea what the author was saying, mainly because in the above, Mr Horowitz speaks in labels and I am not familiar

Big Company, Small Company

Beauty matters because it expresses love. The job of the craftsmen, when completely emerged in the process is to find and create beauty. I took a break from writing this blog to focus on writing a proposal for a much larger company than our own which had requested that we present a luxury line. In the end, I will not present the proposal to the company because the company has refused to sign a simple non-disclosure agreement, a necessary preliminary step, from a designer's perspective. Andersen Design is a design company and cannot ignore the fact that we live in the cyber age wherein large companies eat small ones. The non-disclosure agreement is a basic and minimal  protection, comparable to the terms of agreement one must sign in order to use the services of a website. The spokesperson for the company framed the relationship as about "their platform" but, it is also about our designs and ability to produce them. In our view, a partnership is a two way street, one in

Hand Making Ceramics in the USA, The Medium is still the Message

I was raised in a ceramic business in the home, which was different from its surroundings, making myself and my siblings, outsiders inside the classroom environment. When school closed and summer commenced, an alternate reality emerged, a world in which my family's art was sought after by a wide range of humanity. I felt welcomed by the foreigners and an outsider among local peers. Later when I left home for  NYC, circa 1966, I found myself surrounded by welcoming peers, a difference between night and day. It was New York City at the pinnacle of the flower power era when Greenwich Village was wall-to wall youth culture As you can imagine this formulated a peculiar psychology, so strange, that even I didn't recognize it! From Levittown To Maine in 1952 Page from Jim Harnedy's book on the Boothbay Region. The 200 year old barn which was the first home of Andersen Design was torn down after we moved to East Boothbay A while ago a high school acquaintance told me

An Economic Development and Cultural Vision by Andersen Design

Andersen Design has been invited into a partnership with the leading online venue for the antiques and contemporary design . We have been accepted in both the vintage and contemporary design categories with a mission given to us, to create a luxury line. We are inspired by the project of developing 15-20 designs selling in the range of $700.00 to $3000.00. Our company was created in 1952 with the mission to create a handcrafted product, affordable to the middle class. In 1952 there was a large middle class, but the world has changed. The time is right to create the Andersen Design luxury line, which will allow us to introduce the use of  metallic over glazes and other more expensive raw materials, and to attract highly skilled talent, while continuing to train new talent. Creating a luxury line is an artistic process requiring breathing time to develop. The artistic process used at Andersen Design is intuitional. One can make a map but to actually follow the map requires absol

A Threat to Liberty and Democracy When Suburban Rules Oppress Rural Culture

We live in the a new world order. It sneaked up upon us, cloaked in politically correct copacetic phrases such as, "for the public benefit", "essential government function", and "quality jobs" The  holders of the purse strings pick winners and losers. Capital makes the material world go round, but, man does not live by bread alone. Mankind has a spiritual core which seeks a meaning to life, beyond the mere satisfaction of his material needs, wants and desires. In my local community, a recent article in the Boothbay Register,  Business incubator a fresh idea for JEDC  reports that Roger Ferrell, a church pastor, with a background in developing a non-profit economic development organization called bGEN in South Carolina, spoke with the JECD (joint economic development council). The Minutes for the Boothbay Harbor Selectmen's meeting, January 14, 2019 tells a slightly different story as it reports that bGen is not just Mr Ferrell's backgro