Taking care of your customers

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Tires are important–they are what keeps your car in contact with the road and the basis of a smooth, comfortable ride.

I rely on my tires a lot. When you put on in excess of 20K miles a year, having your tires at peak performance is essential. I’m also a stickler about how my car rides.

This week, I’ve noticed some tire “chatter” that wasn’t there before, especially at highway speeds in excess of 65 mph. Today was the day this week when I had a window of time to take care of my tire issue; otherwise, it would be another week, at least and I’d start to get a bit annoyed knowing that something wasn’t right with my tires. Continue reading →

Back in the saddle

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Being out of work felt like employment purgatory, some kind of in-between state betwixt work and permanent slackerdom. Fortunately for me, this state was short-lived and I’m happy to report that as of yesterday, I’m back in the fold of gainful employment. Actually, I’m on a roll, as it looks like I’ll be working not one, not two, but probably three jobs, or at least managing three disparate income streams. Continue reading →

Haymaking time

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I’m fascinated by haymaking. Gathering the hay symbolizes many different things to me. “Making hay” is also a metaphor for many other things in life, including economic vitality and even success.

Years ago, someone that worked with me, who also happened to be a farmer on the side, was telling me about hay and weather—mainly that you needed three successive days of sunshine and dry weather to cure, or preserve the hay for storage. Cutting your hay and then, having it rained on for several days robs it of much of its nutrient value and limits its capacity to provide nutrients to a farmer’s animals. Continue reading →

The way of the world in two photos

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Sign at Lisbon United Methodist Church, in Lisbon Falls.

I’m not sure exactly what this message is supposed to mean. Well, I have a sense in the context of it being on the church sign of the local Methodist Church in Lisbon Falls that it means something like this; focus on living a life infused with good works and making the world a better place, rather than merely focusing on making a good living—i.e. pursuing wealth accumulation as an endgame. Continue reading →

Turning the page (and embracing the future)

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I’m officially a free agent. The job that I poured my heart into for just short of six years (August 7 would have been anniversary #6) ended yesterday at 5:00 pm.

This transition has been in the works for awhile; yesterday was just one more step in that process. First, the governor began railing against the four LWIBs (my employer) threatening to phase them out by June 30 (this posturing began last September). By March of this year, my hours with the Central/Western Maine Workforce Investment Board had been reduced from 40 to 20. When I walked out the door of the Lewiston CareerCenter last night at 5:15, it was just another step along the reinvention path. Continue reading →

The state of Maine’s workforce

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Tomorrow morning, I’m delivering a presentation to the Kennebec Valley Human Resources Association—in essence, my own “state of the state” on workforce development; it’s titled, “The State of Maine’s Workforce: An Update from the Trenches.”

For the past six years, I’ve been employed by the Central/Western Maine Workforce Investment Board. The Local Workforce Investment Boards, or LWIBs as they’re often referred to, channel the federal Workforce Investment Act (WIA) funds, appropriating them for training and aligning them where each regional LWIB thinks they will be the most effective. A large percentage of those funds support Maine’s One-Stop Career Centers, the bricks and mortar centers where job seekers and the unemployed access employment and career resources. There are 12 One-Stop Career Centers scattered across the state. Continue reading →